End Game
by Miss Becky
Summary: Now complete. Three years after the events of the movie, El Mariachi meets the legendary blind gunfighter.
1. A Chance Meeting

A Chance Meeting

Disclaimer: How I wish I could say I've spent the last few months having my lawyers working on getting me ownership to El and Sands. Alas, I cannot. They still belong to Robert Rodriguez. That's all right. They're in very good hands with him.

Summary: Three years after the events in the film, El Mariachi meets the legendary blind gunfighter.

Rating: Strong PG-13, will probably change to R in later chapters.

Author's Note: Yes, you read the above correctly. I think this story might be a long one. It is not in any way related to my Still Standing trilogy, or any other OUATIM stories I have written. I don't know if there will be any slash – I can't see too far ahead right now – but if there is, I will give out appropriate warnings.

Many thanks go to Melody, my lovely beta reader, not just for being my beta, but for everything. And thanks to everyone who has written me or submitted a review. Your support is what keeps me going.

****

It was a blazing hot Thursday when the cartel finally caught up to El Mariachi.

He wasn't really surprised. He had been expecting it. They had been drawing closer for weeks, and at last they had run him to ground. He had arrived in this dusty town three days ago and decided that he would go no further. He was tired of running. And here seemed as good a place as any to end it all.

His hotel room had two tall thick doors that opened outside. He was on the first floor, the end room, and it had cost him dearly. On this, the appointed afternoon, he opened both doors and calmly walked out.

The plaza beyond was utterly deserted. Water tricked merrily into the fountain, but no kids ran around it, shouting and playing. No couples strolled by, hand in hand. Nobody sat on the many benches having a late lunch. Even the American tourists who were normally too stupid to know better were gone.

El looked around carefully, his weight poised on the balls of his feet. He was waiting. For the flash of sunlight on metal, or the quick movements of a man trying to stay hidden. Something. Anything. A hint of what to expect in the next few seconds.

There. Above. On the balcony of the bank building across the square.

He drew his guns and began to pivot.

A gun boomed. The wall behind him exploded. Chips of stone stung his skin and embedded themselves in his hair. 

Gunfire filled the plaza now from all directions. El turned, letting his hands move on their own. He no longer controlled them. They fired and reloaded all by themselves now.

Around the square, men toppled from balconies. They fell in doorways, and even out of a window. El continued his deadly pirouette, the guns in his hands still blazing, but a part of his mind was suddenly wide awake and clamoring for attention. There were too many shots. Those were not all his kills. He had not even been aware of the man in the window.

He completed his circle and dropped into a crouch. Across the square, a man – already wounded – stepped out from the doorway of a café. He held a rifle in both hands.

El raised his pistol.

The man across the street took another step. Broken glass crunched under his foot.

A single shot rang out. Like magic, a smoking black hole appeared in the center of the man's forehead. He dropped like a stone.

That was the last of them. No more men appeared to take his place. The plaza echoed with unearthly silence.

El rose to his feet, the pistol still raised. And finally he saw the source of the other gunshots, the reason why half the men in the square were dead. To his right, on a balcony not too far above him, stood a man.

The man was dressed all in black, and he wore many guns. Dark sunglasses hid most of his face. He did not even glance in El's direction. He stood on the balcony for a moment longer, then he disappeared into his room.

El stayed where he was, too stunned to move. Then at last his racing brain remembered that it was supposed to be the one giving orders. He broke into a shambling run, back through his rented room, dodging the wooden table that wanted to trip him up. He flung open the door and skidded out into the hall. He hesitated a moment, then turned left and ran down the hall.

The man in black was staying at the same hotel as him. A floor above him, but the same hotel.

El ran. He could hear hurried footsteps up above, the pace nearly matching his own. The ceiling creaked directly over his head.

At the far end of the hall, a door led out into the hotel's courtyard, where another fountain burbled all day long and jasmine bloomed at night. El hit the door running and flung it open so hard it rebounded back and nearly hit him in the face. He shouldered it aside and rushed into the courtyard.

On his left was a staircase rising to the upper levels. He pulled both his pistols and whipped around to face the staircase.

The man in black was already there. And he had two guns aimed at El's head.

El froze. The gunman was slender, with dark hair worn down to his shoulders. White stone chips dusted one sleeve of his black shirt, evidence that at least one bullet had come close to hitting him.

The man just stood there, one leg bent at the knee, his foot resting on the step behind him. He looked perfectly relaxed.

El narrowed his eyes. There was an indefinable aura to the gunman. That casual pose was a deception.

And most amazing of all, he seemed strangely familiar.

Then the gunman spoke, and that sense of recognition flared even stronger in El's mind. The man's Spanish was slightly accented, and there was a flat drawl to his words that even the language could not cover. "Stay where you are. Unless you wish to join your friends out there."

"They are not my friends," El corrected.

The gunman gave a small start of surprise. His head cocked slightly. A thin smile curved his mouth. "El Mariachi," he smirked. "You know, I had started to wonder if you had gotten yourself killed in an alley somewhere."

Those last words were spoken in English, and the sense that he should know this man tugged even harder at El. He tried to see beyond those dark sunglasses. "Who are you?"

"Why El – I can call you El, can't I? – don't you recognize me?" The gunman was grinning now. The guns in his hands sagged a little as he relaxed his wrists, but his entire body was tense, ready to spring. Now more than ever his studied pose was a sham.

And suddenly El knew. The attempted Day of the Dead coup had happened three years ago, and he rarely thought about it now. He had not seen Fideo and Lorenzo in two years. He had not been back to Culiacan at all. Since the day he had walked away from Marquez's corpse, he had not once thought about the man who had started it all.

"Sands," he breathed. He could scarcely believe it. The man who had asked him to kill Marquez had been dangerous, but soft. There was nothing at all soft about this man standing on the stairs in front of him.

"At your service." The CIA officer gave him a mocking bow. "Now, if you wouldn't mind…" He made a gesture with one of the guns.

El did not move. "What are you doing here?" Despite the drilling heat of the day – only marginally less in the shade of the courtyard – he felt cold all over.

"Tidying up some loose ends, if you will," Sands said. He shifted his grip on one of the guns. Not much. Just enough for El to see that his finger was curled about the trigger.

"You're not here for me?" El asked. He asked himself why he had not already killed the American, but his brain had no answers for him.

"Not everything is about you," Sands said coldly. "Now get the fuck out of my way."

Briefly El considered not doing it. Then he decided not to press his luck. In the three years since the coup, Sands had obviously been learning how to be a better killer. There was no doubt that the man was good.

He lowered his pistols, and stepped to the side.

Sands smirked. "Good boy." He came down the stairs, moving with silent grace. Watching him, El suddenly understood that Sands had meant for him to hear the footsteps over his head as they had run their separate races to the courtyard, each of them on their own floor of the hotel. Sands had wanted this confrontation. Had the man chosen to avoid him completely, Sands would have slipped away undetected, and El would never have known the identity of his mysterious ally.

"Why are you still here?" he asked. "In Mexico?"

Sands had been standing very still in the courtyard, just a few feet away from El. Now he turned and gave El an exasperated sigh. "I have my reasons."

"I do not think--" El began.

One of Sands' hands shot up. "Would you shut up?" he hissed.

El suddenly realized that things were still too quiet out here. There were no sounds of approaching spectators. No curious people emerging from their hideaways, wanting to see the carnage.

"Someone's still out there," he said.

"You catch on quick," Sands said scornfully. He tightened his grip on his guns. He took four careful steps forward and then pressed himself against the wall of the hotel. The move put him behind the staircase, not far from the corner of the building, where anyone who came around the corner would see him instantly. It was a strange position to take, with no cover, and El frowned. What kind of game was Sands playing at?

"They are here for me," he said. He could not understand why Sands was still here. The CIA officer owed him nothing. Why was Sands fighting for him?

"Fuck you," Sands muttered.

_I have my reasons_, he had said. El wondered just what they were.

And then the cartel man suddenly staggered into the courtyard, and El's mind shut down. He didn't think anymore. He just reacted.

For a few moments the only sound in the hot afternoon was gunfire. Then the last echoes rolled away, and El could hear his own breathing again. He found himself stretched out flat on the steps, one arm draped over the side of the staircase so he had a clear field of fire. 

The cartel man was dead, his body riddled with bullets. Blood streaked the wall behind him.

Sands stood over the dead man, both guns still smoking. As El watched, he dropped first one, then the other. Slowly, as if he wasn't sure he wanted to do it, he collapsed.

Instinctively El jumped off the stairs and hurried toward the fallen officer.

And then he stopped. What did he care if Sands died? Sands had tried to have El Presidente killed. Sands had stood back and watched while a bloody coup occurred, where innocent lives had been lost.

Sands deserved to die.

He holstered his guns and turned toward the door leading back inside. He would gather his belongings – meaning his guitar case – and leave. He had already stayed here too long.

In the courtyard, Sands stirred. He cursed under his breath, and started to rise.

El hesitated. He shouldn't linger. But he was so curious. He wanted to know.

He walked over to where Sands knelt in the dust. He grabbed Sands' upper arms and hauled him to his feet. Sands choked back a groan, and tried to double over. El saw the blood on his shirt and felt no sympathy at all. "Tell me why you are still in my country," he demanded.

Sands lifted his chin in defiance. "Your country?" he mocked.

El gave him a hard shake. "Tell me," he said.

"You really want to be letting go of me, _El_," Sands said. He kept his voice low, as if they were having a friendly conversation.

But there was nothing friendly about the gun suddenly jammed against El's skull. The mariachi swallowed a curse. He had walked right into Sands' trap. For all he knew, the man wasn't really hurt that bad. This had been a ploy to get him to lower his guard, so Sands could kill him.

__

Then why didn't he kill you before? He had plenty of chances, said a quiet voice in the back of his mind.

He scowled. "If I hear of you arranging any more coups, or--"

"Actually," Sands said, "I didn't organize it. That was all Barillo's work."

El restrained himself from punching the man in the mouth. He couldn't see beyond those dark sunglasses, but he knew Sands was laughing at him. "I want you gone," he growled. "Out of Mexico."

"No can do," Sands said. The gun at his temple suddenly dug deep. "And I told you to get your fucking hands off me."

There was no warning. El tried to duck, but he wasn't fast enough, no man was fast enough. The gun went off. Pain seared through his skull, and then he was falling.

His last thought was that he would get Sands for this, if it took him the rest of his life.

****

When he woke up, he was in the ambulance, and Sands was long gone.

*******


	2. On the Outskirts of Town

On the Outskirts of Town

Disclaimer: El and Sands belong to the sheer genius of Robert Rodriguez.

Rating: A strong PG-13 for violence and language

Summary: El and Sands meet up again

****

El had never made a very good patient. Within two days he had made such a nuisance of himself that the hospital released him. 

Actually, what happened was that he was given a supply of painkillers and told to get the hell out. He didn't care. He had better things to do than lie in bed all day, nursing a painful-but-not-serious head wound.

The first thing he did was get away from the town where the gunfight had happened. Far away. He drove well into the night and finally stopped only when the pain in his skull threatened to reach atomic proportions. He pulled over at a motel with hourly rates that catered to pimps and whores, and booked a room.

"How long you want it for?" asked the bored desk clerk.

El glared at him. "The rest of the night," he said.

The clerk shrugged and handed him a key.

Once inside, he shoved a chair under the doorknob. He put one of his pistols under the pillow. Then, still fully clothed, he stretched out on the bed and fell asleep.

****

The next morning he woke up to a killer headache. Sunlight streamed in through the windows. It was an oven in the room, which smelled of old sex and cabbage. Grimacing, he sat up slowly, one hand pressed to his head. Beneath his palm, a bandage covered the long gash that had been left by the passage of Sands' bullet. A little to the left and El would have died in that courtyard.

But he had lived. And Sands had just made his last mistake. El was going to hunt him down, and when he found his prey, he was going to make Sands wish he had never come to Mexico.

He staggered over to the phone and placed a call. The man who answered sounded hungover and pissed off. "What?"

"What do you know about Sands?" El asked.

"What the fuck do you mean, what do I know?" Lorenzo asked. His voice became muffled, as if he was scrubbing at his face, trying to dispel the last of his hangover.

"He's alive," El said. "Or at least he was, three days ago." He named the town where the shoot-out had occurred. He hesitated, then said, "He has a vendetta of his own. He took out most of the cartel."

"Well, yeah," Lorenzo said. He yawned into El's ear. "Everybody knows that."

This gave El pause. Everybody knew? Well, he sure as hell hadn't known. He glared at his reflection in the mirror. He looked like shit, his hair in sweaty clumps, his shirt dirty and bloodstained. It was a wonder the desk clerk had not called the police after seeing him. 

"And by the way, nice to hear from you again," Lorenzo said sarcastically. "It's only been, what? Two years?"

El did not bother to reply to this. His mind was working fast. "If you know so much about him, why didn't tell me?"

"I figured you already knew," Lorenzo said. He gave a short laugh. "What's this about? Are you pissed because he didn't let the cartel kill you? Or because he got away before you could kill him?"

El said nothing. He would let Lorenzo figure that one out on his own. 

"Were you hurt?" Lorenzo asked.

"More or less," El said. He fingered the bandage on his head again, then deliberately lowered his hand. "If I ever see him again, I will kill him."

"Well," Lorenzo said, "if you act fast enough, you might just get your wish."

"What are you talking about?" El scowled.

"Rumor has it, he's just arrived in town," Lorenzo said. "No one knows why. He's holed up in the old Salazar estate. Waiting for something. Or someone. Nobody knows."

Within ten minutes, El Mariachi was on the road again.

****

The old Salazar estate. It had been two years since El had been to the town where Lorenzo and Fideo lived and played their music, but he could envision the house without any trouble. It sat on the outskirts of the town, a rambling yellow stone monstrosity. When El had lived in town, sharing a house and many many bottles of tequila with Lorenzo and Fideo, a succession of fading For Sale signs had stood out in the front yard of the old Salazar house. Most of the windows were gone, and there was a large hole in the roof near the back. But the house itself was still intact, and it was big. It would make a fine hideout for someone who wasn't bothered by things like aesthetics.

Early the next morning – the fourth since the shoot-out – he parked his car on a street behind the house. He approached from the rear. He couldn't see any signs that anyone was living here, but that meant nothing. After all, Sands was clever.

The back door was boarded over. El shrugged. He had never been one to take no for an answer.

Halfway down the side wall of the house there was a square opening where shards of broken glass still clung to a wooden frame. El peered inside. He could see a moldy mattress in the corner, a broken heap of wood that had probably once been a dresser, and nothing else.

Carefully he crawled in through the window.

The instant he set his foot down, he knew it was a trap. Bits of broken glass and wood scrunched beneath his boot, as loud as a gunshot in the stillness of the house.

"Shit," El muttered. He hurried to bring his other leg inside, so he could meet the inevitable attack head-on. He moved into the corner, where the shadows in the room provided at least some cover. When Sands came in, his eyes would naturally be drawn to the window first. In those precious moments when his attention was elsewhere, El might be able to kill him.

But Sands did not come into the room. Silence reigned throughout the house.

At last El decided that Sands wasn't coming. Either he wasn't there, or he wanted El to think that. Whichever it was, there was nothing to be gained by cowering in the shadows.

He crept through the room, watching where he stepped this time. The door to the room was ajar, and he pushed it open slowly, half-expecting to hear the squeal of rusty hinges.

The door was silent. Just like the rest of the house.

El was not reassured. Over the years he had come to trust his instincts, and right now they were telling him that Sands was in the house.

There was only one way to find out. He began to make his way down the hall, a pistol in front and leading the way.

He had just stepped into the kitchen when the trap finally sprang shut. His leg hit something fine and yielding. He realized it was a wire the same instant he saw the man standing in the corner.

It was Sands. The CIA officer was still dressed all in black, and despite the gloom in the kitchen, he still had sunglasses on. He was wearing at least four guns that El could see, two at his hips and two more in shoulder holsters. And probably there were others.

El started to raise his gun, when something over his head gave an ominous creak. He didn't even bother looking up. He leaped to one side, just as the jagged block of yellow stone came crashing down. It missed his head and struck him on the right shoulder, smashing into pieces as it hit him. Immediately his right arm went numb. The gun dropped from his fingers and clattered to the floor.

From the corner of the kitchen, Sands fired. El, who had already been falling because of the brick, threw himself facedown on the floor. 

A bullet buried itself in the wall not three inches above him.

And Sands was preparing to fire again.

El rolled along the floor. Every nerve ending along the gash in his head was alive and screaming with pain, setting off bright lights in his vision. His right arm would not obey him, so he reached out with his left and grabbed a chunk of the yellow stone that had been meant to kill him. 

He threw. Sands fired again. The bullet pulverized the stone. Rock and dust showered down on Sands, who did not even flinch. He just moved his wrist a fraction downward, so the gun was now aimed at El's head.

El rolled again, this time in the opposite direction, back toward the doorway. He tumbled over chunks of stone, barely even feeling the pain as their rough edges dug into his back and shoulders. Bullets traced along the floor just behind him as Sands continued to fire.

As he rolled past the largest remainder of the block that had fallen from over the door, El seized it in his left hand. There was no time to aim. He simply threw it as hard as he could.

The rock struck Sands right in the forehead. He fell backward, thumping into the wall.

El took advantage of the only chance he was likely to get. He dove forward, reaching out with both hands, intending to choke Sands.

Sands was ready for him. As El came within striking distance, Sands sprang at him. A new gun had materialized in his hand.

Without thinking, El grabbed the barrel of the gun. He twisted it viciously, and Sands let go with a snarled curse. El reversed the direction his arm was moving in, and drove the butt of the pistol across Sands' face.

Sands fell to the floor, his dark hair covering his face, the palm of one hand striking the tile with a loud smack. His sunglasses went flying, skittering across the floor to fetch up against the stove.

Feeling was just beginning to return to El's right arm. His head throbbed sickly, making him want to retch. Fully enraged, he shifted the gun to his dominant hand. With his left he reached down, grasped a handful of Sands' shirt, and yanked the man upright. He socked the barrel of the pistol under Sands' jaw and prepared to pull the trigger.

And then he saw.

Sheer horror washed over him, weakening his muscles. He released Sands with a shove. "My God."

Sands uttered a mirthless chuckle. "Why El, surely you can do better than that." He leaned against the wall with one shoulder, half-sitting up. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth where the pistol had struck him.

El could only stare at the empty hollows where Sands' eyes had been. He was both repulsed and morbidly fascinated by the bizarre image. "Who did that?" he asked.

"Fuck you," Sands spat. He reached up and probed at the cut on his lip with one finger.

"I could shoot you now," El offered.

"Go ahead," Sands said wearily. He pushed against the wall so he could sit upright, then promptly fell back against it again. "Make my day."

El's eyes narrowed. For the first time he noticed how pale Sands was, and the sheen of sweat on his skin. In the dim light, and with the black fabric, it was difficult to tell, but he thought Sands was still bleeding from the gunshot wound he had received in the hotel courtyard four days ago.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Well," Sands drawled, "I thought I'd open up a little restaurant. You know, cater to the tourists while still keeping the locals happy. I'll serve roadkill and call it the Chef's Special. Hey, if you're real good, you can be my mariachi. I'll pay you two bucks a day, plus tips. What do you say?"

El ignored all this. He was suddenly remembering things he had heard over the last three years. Really only the last two years, but even before then. Stories, rumors, whispers. Tales of a blind gunfighter.

The stories were legendary. Almost as mythical as his own tale. Stories of a man dressed all in black arriving in a town where cartel had a presence. Stories of gunfights, of ambushes. Every story was different, but they all ended the same, with the smoking ruin of the cartel in that town, and the disappearance of the blind man who always wore black.

"That was you," he murmured. He could not believe it. He had dismissed most of the tales as fantastical legends with no more truth than the stories about himself. But apparently the stories had not been wrong.

"What?" The detached amusement was gone from Sands' voice. Now he just sounded hurt, and pissed.

"You're the blind gunfighter," El said. He looked down at the gun he was holding, the gun he had taken from Sands.

"Gosh, El, I can't put anything past you," Sands said acidly.

El scowled. He raised the gun and tapped his fingers along the barrel, creating enough sound for Sands to hear. "I am going to ask you one last time," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm going to turn this place into an orphanage," Sands said. "The town fathers will love me, and I'll run a sweatshop in the basement. The kids will slave away all day sewing wallets that I'll sell to the US for a thousand percent markup, thus making a ton of dough." He smirked. "Fuck you, _El_, if you think I'm telling you anything."

With some surprise, El suddenly realized that Sands wanted him to pull the trigger.

He could not comprehend the workings of a mind that could be so self-destructive. He was not sure he wanted to. In disgust, he lowered the gun to the floor, taking care to be as quiet as possible, so Sands would not know what he was doing. "Tell me what you are doing here," he said, for the third time.

Sands started to reply, no doubt with something equally as charming as his first answers, but before he could get more than a word out, he broke off in a gasp of pain. He went deathly white, and he pressed one hand to his abdomen. When he did, El could see the wetness shining on his shirt. He was definitely bleeding.

Sympathetic pain twinged along his skull, waking the hurt that had just begun to subside. He frowned. "Have you seen a doctor?"

Shocking him, Sands let out a cackle. There wasn't much in the way of sanity in that laugh. Hearing it sent chills up El's spine. "Have I seen a doctor? That's a good one, El! Why I'll have you know, the last thing I ever saw was a doctor."

"There is a man in town," El said lamely. He clamped his jaw shut. What was he doing? He had come here to kill this man, and now he was offering the services of a doctor? That bullet must really have scrambled his brains, he thought sourly, if it had come to this.

"Get out of here," Sands said wearily. "If you're not going to kill me, then just get the fuck out of here."

"I am not going to kill you," El said. But he frowned as he said it. He wondered just exactly what he _was_ going to do, then.

"Good." With lightning speed, Sands crossed his hands in front of his chest and drew the guns from his shoulder holsters. Looking at both barrels was like looking into dark, unforgiving eyes.

Those guns _were _Sands' eyes now, El thought. The only eyes he would ever have.

"Bye-bye, El," Sands said cheerfully. "It's been nice seeing you. But now it's time for you to toddle off to wherever you mariachis go at the end of a long hard day."

"It's morning," El said.

"Whatever," Sands snarled. He punctuated his point with a sharp jab of the guns. "You have until the count of three. Then I can't be responsible for what happens. One."

El got up and ran. 

He disappeared through the doorway just as Sands shouted, "Two!" Bullets embedded themselves in the doorframe, splintering wood.

El went down the hall and out the front door. It was loose on its hinges, and as he knocked it open, the top hinge tore free of the frame. The door sagged downward drunkenly.

El ran. He did not look back.

****

Ten minutes later he shoved open the door to Lorenzo's house. "Why didn't you tell me," he panted, "that Sands was the blind gunfighter?"

Lorenzo was in the middle of eating a burrito. He paused with it halfway to his mouth. Meat and tomato fell out and splatted on his plate. 

He shrugged. "I thought you knew," he said. 

******


	3. It All Starts With Sunglasses

It All Starts With Sunglasses

Disclaimer: They belong to Robert Rodriguez, not me.

Rating: PG-13 for language

Summary: Sands reminisces and El returns

Author's Note: I just want to make it official, so everyone can see it. I am an idiot. I forgot to thank my beta reader Melody in the last chapter. I also forgot to say to everyone how wonderful your reviews are, and how delighted I am that everyone seems to be liking this story. So without further ado...

Thanks, Melody. You're the greatest.

And you guys rock.

****

No matter how many times it happened, getting shot never became any easier. And this time, Sands was beginning to think, it was going to kill him.

__

What are you doing here? El had asked, and he had wanted to laugh. He had thought it was perfectly obvious what he was doing here. Like an animal sensing the end, he had come here to die. 

He was pissed off that El was not dead. He had spent a long time rigging that stone just right. It had always worked before. But there was no chance he could do it again. He didn't think he had the strength for it now, and it was for sure that he wasn't able to go hunting for another decent-sized chunk of stone.

"Fuck!" The word was out before he could stop it. El had taken one of his guns. He had scoured every inch of the kitchen, and he was still missing the gun the mariachi had grabbed from him.

"Okay, okay, fine." He staggered out of the kitchen, bumping along the wall with his shoulder. Not for guidance -- he knew the layout of the house by heart – but so he wouldn't fall down.

He had made something of a nest in the back bedroom. A mattress with slightly less funk on it than all the others. Something that might have been a sheet – or maybe a tablecloth. A pistol shoved under the mattress. A knife with a hilt that, he had decided after much examination, bore a stylized depiction of a naked woman. An empty bottle of tequila. Cigarettes, not the hand-rolled ones he preferred, but shitty-tasting storebought coffin nails. A few books of matches. And a flashlight, one of those big Magna-Lite jobs. He had no idea if it worked or not. What mattered was the satisfying crunching sound it would make when it impacted someone's skull.

He lowered himself onto the mattress, his breath catching in an involuntary gasp of pain. Christ, it hurt. Over the years he had gotten pretty good at digging out bullets, but this one had so far defied all his attempts at removal. It remained inside. Infection had set in, and his time was growing shorter with every hour.

__

What a way to go, he thought bitterly. How inglorious. How wasteful. He had hoped he could goad El into pulling the trigger, so at least he could say he had died at the hands of someone worth remembering. Instead some ignorant cartel fucker had gotten lucky, and now here he was.

Well, he supposed he should be grateful to have survived this long. Certainly he would not have predicted it.

A thin smile crossed his face. Sands never allowed himself to think about the past, but today was a special occasion. He was dying, after all. He could permit himself this one indulgence.

He reached up with a hand that would not stop shaking and traced the curved contours of his sunglasses. Because that was where it had all started. With sunglasses.

****

"Mexico?" His cocky grin slipped a little. He took off his sunglasses so he could see the speaker better. "Is this a joke?"

"It's no joke, Sheldon. You're being debriefed at noon, and you'll be on a plane this evening. By this time tomorrow you'll be in Mexico."

****

Okay, maybe not that far back. Fast forward some.

****

He always wore sunglasses when he met a contact. Belini, Cucuy, the latest rat in his latest scheme, even his own supervisors. If he felt comfortable at the meeting, he would take them off. If not, well, they stayed on.

He had been working with Belini almost from day one. A recommendation by the last officer to have this post. He had met with Belini only because he was bored and needed something to do that day. Belini was slimy and he thought he was funny when in fact he was just downright aggravating, but he was good at what he did. Five minutes of serious questioning had been all it took to convince Sands to keep Belini as a contact. He despised the greasy-haired fucker, but when Sands wanted information, he went to Belini first.

Belini had found Cucuy. Cucuy in turn had led to all kinds of illegal activities, and that was when the dough had started pouring in. Payoffs, bribes, and blackmail. Sands hid behind a fake mustache and the shadowy threat of the almighty U.S. government, and he grew steadily more wealthy and confident.

And then the day job suddenly turned interesting. Surveilling the Barillo cartel finally yielded some results. News of a coup. In the space of five seconds, Sands' life in Mexico went from being boring-as-hell to very exciting. These were interesting times he was living in, all right. Once or twice he thought about approaching Barillo over coffee, or lunch, so they could discuss things like absolute power and balance. He decided he could not let an opportunity like this pass him by. He would allow the coup to happen, but he would add his own twist to it. 

And those twenty million pesos? They had his name written all over them.

But he needed an inside man. Someone to keep Marquez from taking control. Cucuy was too obvious – the man wouldn't know subtle if it walked up and smacked him on the head. So he turned to Belini, and Belini, as always, delivered the goods.

El Mariachi. _Does it have a name?_ Information on El was surprisingly abundant. Most of it was utter bullshit, of course, but a few nuggets of fact could be gleaned from the crap if a man knew how to look for them. Annoyingly enough, however, El's real name was not one of those facts.

Whatever his name was, El Mariachi turned out to be a hard man to predict. Sands prided himself on being able to figure out a man within five minutes of meeting him. He had thought he had El figured out. When El had not kept his side of the bargain, he had simply assumed the mariachi was dead. It had never occurred to him that El would reject his proposal and turn on him.

In hindsight, a lot of things had never occurred to him. And now, three years later, he was still paying the price for his stupidity, his overconfidence, his arrogant belief that he could set it all in motion and then just sit back and watch it happen.

Instead, he had watched as it all fell apart around him, and there had been nothing he could do about it. El had disappeared and Cucuy had betrayed him to the cartel and his own fucking government had abandoned him. He had arranged the meeting at La Vaca Volanda, but he had never really thought it would go down.

Of course, he really had met someone there that day. Only it hadn't been his own people. It had been Ajedrez. He had looked up at her, still on that goddamn cell phone, and he had known. Just one look, and he had known it was all over.

In some countries, spies were given cyanide capsules so they could commit suicide if they were caught. The civilized United States of America gave its officers cell phones.

So, Barillo. Not a pleasant memory, but one that he faced daily. _You have only seen things_.

Dr. Guevara. Bright shiny metal. Scarlet blood veiling everything. Surprisingly little pain.

And then, nothing. Darkness. Unending darkness.

After that things were fractured. Time was lost. To this day he didn't know how much. Weeks, to be sure. Maybe even months. 

He remembered the kid. The taxi. The gunfight. Ajedrez again. _See something you like?_ The kid yet again. Ramirez, and a barking dog? Maybe. That part was fuzzy.

After that? Darkness and pain. Voices. Sometimes soft, sometimes screaming. He had a very clear memory of cool water running over his hands, but he had no context for it, so he wondered if it was a dream. He remembered hearing a song on the radio, and reaching for his belt so he could get dressed, and then everything went blank again. It was funny how he could remember simple things so easily, but the big things were lost.

He had no idea how long he had been recovering. He knew he had come close to dying. Very close. Close enough that he knew what he was missing, and some days the yearning for it almost eclipsed his even-stronger desire to live.

Then one day it had occurred to him that he could get the fuckers who had done this to him. He could get them all. He had thought about this for a while, then given a mental shrug. Why not? He had nothing better to do. And he owed them for what they had done to him. He had risen from his bed, strapped on his guns, and he had walked out of the house. He had thumbed a ride and given the driver a destination, and so the hunt had begun.

Luck, resourcefulness, and the surprising willingness of people to help had kept him alive this far. There was little love for the cartels among the common folk of Mexico. He had gotten accurate tips from any number of sources throughout the years. He had lost track of the towns he had visited, the bars he had slouched in, the beers he had drunk.

He had no idea how many men he had killed in the last three years.

And now one of them had killed him. He had been shot before, of course, but he had finally met the bullet with his name on it. 

He curled onto his side, bringing up his knees to accommodate the pain in his stomach. It was too bad the tequila was gone. It might have made dying a little bit easier.

****

When he woke up, someone was in the room with him. He grabbed for his guns and tried to sit up, but the guns were gone and the fever was back, and he fell back onto the mattress. He tried to speak, and a shivering fit swept over him, making his teeth chatter.

The footsteps drew nearer. With every other one he heard the merry jingle of chains.

A hand crashed down on his forehead. He jerked his head to one side. "Fuck off," he snarled, hating the way his voice shook.

"You need help," said El Mariachi.

"I don't need _your_ help," he spat. He gave a titanic heave and managed to sit up. Cold fire licked along his abdomen from the bullet wound, and he gasped.

El pushed him back down. He lashed out, shoving the mariachi's arm away. He knew he was being childish, but he didn't care. No way, no way in _hell_ was he accepting help from the great El Mariachi.

Another voice said, "How long has he been like this?"

"Four days," El said.

The mariachi and the doctor continued to talk about him. Sands lay still, gritted his teeth, and slowly slid his hand down so he could reach the gun hidden under the mattress.

Another set of footsteps approached. Hoping that El would turn to look at the doctor, Sands made his move. His hand plunged under the mattress.

And came up empty. The gun and knife were both gone. Even the flashlight with its satisfying heft was gone.

A howl of frustrated fury burst from his lips. "You bastard!" He launched himself at El, but the mariachi caught him easily and wrestled him back down to the mattress.

"Stop," El said. "You will only hurt yourself."

"Oh, that's _rich_," Sands panted. "Coming from the guy who tried to kill me this morning." His weapons were gone. El had a tight grip on his wrists. But nothing prevented him from using his feet. With El's voice and the dip in the mattress from El's weight to guide him, he knew just where to aim, too.

El uttered a hoarse croak as Sands' boot caught him square in the crotch. He fell back, releasing Sands as he went.

Sands didn't wait to find out what the mariachi would do next. He lashed out with one fist, then the other. Only his left hand made contact – the right had been too low, for he had overestimated how far El had fallen. But that was all right. All he needed was one moment of touch to tell him where El was.

He struck again, this time with the heel of his right hand. A simple tactic, but one with amazing results. Break El's nose and drive the bone up into El's brain, and ladies and gentlemen, we have one very dead mariachi.

The flat of his hand smacked against El's nose, but before he could drive his arm up and deliver the killing thrust, El jerked his head to one side. At the same time, a fist caught him in the side. Pain exploded in his abdomen, and he cried out with surprise and hurt.

They fell together, each of them breathing hard with pain and exertion. For a moment Sands lay where he was, his right arm draped across El's chest, his right leg over El's. The mariachi's body was warm and solid beneath him, a strange sensation after three years of solitude.

Then El twitched, and Sands remembered suddenly where he was. He tried to roll off the mariachi, but his body would not obey him. Chills shuddered through him, and he could not stop shaking. Against his will his hand clutched at El, trying to draw the mariachi closer. He needed the warmth of El's body. Christ, he was so cold!

El said something, but the mariachi's voice came from very far away. Hands took hold of his shoulders, and he was lifted and then laid back down on the mattress. And just like that, the chills vanished and he was dumped in the desert under a blazing sun. The heat was everything, the heat was the whole world. The mattress was scratchy even through his clothes, making his skin itch and tingle.

He hurt so much. He just wanted to die. It had been three years. Surely he was allowed to die now.

A hand brushed the hair off his forehead. The voice spoke again, words he did not comprehend. Only the tone of the voice reached him, quiet and steady.

Another voice came. This one was higher-pitched, older but kinder. The deep voice answered, and this time there was a steely note in its words.

The owner of the old voice might have said something in response, but Sands never knew it. He was floating among the darkness.

****

"Why do you want to save him?" asked the doctor.

"I want him healthy when I kill him," El said without hesitation.

Then he frowned.

That was the right answer. It was the only answer. So why did it feel so wrong?

******

Author's Note: So you may have noticed that these particular versions of El and Sands are pretty dark. To be honest, I didn't expect this, nor did I predict the dark turn the story will take in chapter 5. I really have no idea where this is going. I think this is a new world's record – only three chapters in, and already the boys have control. I'm just along for the ride. 

So far, it's a pretty bumpy ride.


	4. Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies...

Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer

Disclaimer: I had forgotten how annoying these things are. Of course I don't own El and Sands.

Rating: PG-13 for language

Summary: El and Sands catch up a little.

Author's Note: Thanks to Melody, who not only beta reads, she slices and dices and can still cut through a tin can. And to Bainpeth for the very sweet and unexpected plug on LJ.

****

It was dark out by the time the doctor left. Night insects hummed and sang reedy songs. Stars were strewn haphazardly across the sky, as if a giant hand had thrown them against a sticky black backdrop.

El sat on the back porch of the abandoned Salazar estate and smoked. He needed some time alone with his thoughts.

He was uncomfortable with himself and his actions today. This morning everything had seemed so clear. He had planned to come here and kill Sands. Then he had figured he would sleep the night at Lorenzo's house and figure out what to do next with his life. He had never imagined he would be sitting here, puzzled and feeling like a stranger to himself.

So why had he done it?

He hadn't really lied to the doctor. If anyone was going to kill Sands, he wanted to be the one to do it. And in a way, keeping Sands alive was helping himself. Sands was killing cartel, and that meant less pressure on him, less people looking for him. After the botched coup and his murder of Barillo, he had truly expected the hunt for him to reach almost hysterical proportions. Yet that had not happened, and now he knew why. The cartels had been busy looking over their shoulders for the blind gunfighter. El Mariachi had become almost secondary to them. For that, he owed Sands a vote of thanks.

Also he pitied the CIA officer. No one deserved to be blinded like that, not even someone as evil as Sands. Again he wondered how it had happened, and who had done it. He remembered Sands as being cocky and arrogant. He had tried to rule Mexico from a cell phone. Obviously someone had decided he was tired of being manipulated, and figured he would turn the tables on Sands.

He finished his cigarette. He ground it under the toe of his boot and went into the house.

It was dark inside. No electricity meant no lights. Sands had a flashlight, but it didn't work. El had to trail his fingers along the walls and walk with the other hand held out in front of him, scouting out the territory. He didn't like it.

He reached the back bedroom and stopped in the doorway. It was lighter in here because of the missing window, but it still took some time for his eyes to adjust. He heard Sands before he saw him. The CIA officer was breathing in soft little gasps of pain and fever. The doctor had taken one look at the wound and said there was nothing he could do. Sands would either have to go to a hospital, or the bullet would have to remain inside.

The doctor had left some drugs, and a promise to return tomorrow with more. Sands, however, had rebelled at taking the pills. He had twisted and fought, twice spitting both water and pills at El until the mariachi had finally lost his patience and simply poured water down Sands' throat until Sands had to swallow the pills or else choke to death.

The doctor had observed all this from a safe, dry distance, then remarked, "It's the fever. He isn't himself."

El had raised an eyebrow and mopped water off his face, but he had said nothing.

Unperturbed, the doctor had pointed at Sands' face and said, "He won't want the drugs. Whoever did that to him surely drugged him first." He had shuddered. "I hope."

Now El looked down at Sands and thought the doctor was probably right. He could see the man now, although not in any detail. Just as a shadowy shape huddled on a smelly mattress that leaked stuffing from a long tear down the side.

Even in the dim light, El could see the sunglasses. "Who was it?" he asked.

Sands did not move, but the change in his breathing revealed that he had heard the question.

"I am thinking...Cucuy maybe," El said. He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. "No?"

Sands said nothing.

"Someone else you tried to use for your own benefit? Someone else you coldly manipulated?" He became aware that a jeering note had entered his voice, but he did not care. "Who was it? I wish I could meet him. I would like to thank him in person."

Sands' breath caught. El was glad to hear it. That meant he had struck a nerve.

"Why haven't you killed me yet?" Sands asked. His voice was hoarse.

El scowled. He wanted to be the one asking the questions. Asking questions didn't require as much thought as answering them. Right now he was unhappy with himself. He didn't want to be doing any more thinking than he had to.

After a while, Sands said, "Looks like we each have our secrets."

El's frown deepened. He wasn't keeping a secret. He didn't want to kill Sands yet because...well, just because.

"Are you in pain?" he asked. "The doctor left drugs for you."

He thought Sands would refuse. But no. "Give them to me."

El hesitated. Sands was at his mercy now. He could withhold the painkillers and make the man suffer. He could throw away the antibiotics and watch Sands' fever climb until he had convulsions. But these thoughts held little appeal. In truth, they actually made him feel a little sick.

He got the drugs and poured a cup of water from the jug he had bought at the store. He carried these things over to Sands and hunkered down beside the mattress. "Here."

"Christ, I know you're there," Sands snapped. "Everyone in this whole damn state can probably hear you jingling away like it's fucking Christmas morning." He held out his hand and El dropped two of the white pills into his palm. Sands popped them into his mouth and held out his hand again. El gave him the cup and Sands drank, his Adam's apple working.

El took the cup back and stood up. He started walking off, and Sands said, "I'm surprised you don't already know."

He stopped. "Know what?" he asked, his back to Sands.

"It was Barillo."

El blinked. He had not expected that. "Did you know I killed him?"

Sands sighed, a sound of exasperation. When he spoke he sounded as bored as he had when he had informed El that he knew of Bucho's death. "Yes, I knew that."

"Oh," El said. He set the cup down and walked back toward Sands. His head was beginning to ache again. He thought of the little white painkillers, but then decided against it. The drugs had made Sands sleep, and El had no intention of letting his guard down around this man. Even sick and injured, Sands was dangerous.

"You see, unlike some people, I try to stay abreast of current events," Sands said.

El glowered down at him. "I have been busy."

"You've been busy," Sands repeated. 

"Yes," El said. He had the sinking feeling he had just walked into yet another trap.

"Doing what?" Sands smirked. "Running for your life?"

"Yes," El said. It sounded lame even to himself.

"Well, jeez El, so have I. But I've found time to keep up, and I can't even read the fucking newspapers anymore!" Sands shifted on the mattress, trying to find a position that was more comfortable. His face tightened with pain, but he did not make a sound.

"It's easier for you," El said. He resented the implication that he had had his head up his ass for three years. After all, staying ahead of the cartels did require some intelligence on his part. "You're CIA. You probably have contacts all over this country feeding you information."

Sands gave him a small smile. "I _was _CIA. And I don't have any contacts anymore. If they aren't dead, they've gone silent. Going on with their lives like I never existed. That's the rule."

"So you, what?" El asked. He sat cross-legged on the floor. "You have spent all this time hunting the cartels. For what? You think if you kill enough of them they will give you your eyes back?"

"Can they give you Carolina back?" Sands retorted.

El lunged. The mere thought of this man speaking the name of his dead wife infuriated him. He was going to wrap his hands around Sands' throat and squeeze, so Sands could never again say that name, never again say anything at all.

His ass had barely left the floor when Sands brought the gun up. "Surprise, fuckmook," Sands grinned. "Did you think I wouldn't find where you hid them?"

Stunned, El could only stare. Sands must have gone looking for the guns while he had sat outside, smoking. He had only gone out because he had believed the man was asleep. But Sands, once again, had fooled him.

"It's been nice knowing you, El." Sands pulled the trigger.

A dry click filled the air.

The grin faded from Sands' face. He did not bother pulling the trigger again. "Nice one. Letting me find an unloaded gun." His voice was light. Only the set of his jaw was proof of his anger.

"I thought you would try," El said._ Just not this soon,_ he thought.

"Hey, you never know when you'll get lucky," Sands said. He tossed the gun in El's direction. It hit El in the knee, eliciting a curse from the mariachi.

El picked up the gun, fingering it thoughtfully. Sands was constantly surprising him. He never knew what to expect next. The man should have been unconscious at the least, yet here he was, fighting his own mortality so he could crawl around a room he couldn't see and look for a gun he had to know wouldn't be loaded. But he had done it anyway.

Despite his hatred for the man, El found himself respecting Sands. Surrender was clearly not a word in Sands' vocabulary, in either English _or_ Spanish. "How do you do it?" he asked.

"Do what?" Sands said. He rolled onto his back, raising his right leg so it was bent at the knee. He rested his hands on his chest, just above the place where the bullet had entered his abdomen.

"All of it," El said. He remembered how helpless he had felt just trying to make his way through the dark halls of the house in order to reach this room with its dim light. He could not imagine being blind, and not being able to see the world around him. He could not imagine the courage it would take to get out of bed every morning, knowing you were not going to see anything. If it happened to him, he would want to curl up in a corner and retreat from the world. He could not fathom the strength required to walk in constant darkness with your head held high.

His respect for Sands went up another notch. "How do you do it?"

"You want a dissertation? How To Cope With Blindness 101?" Bitterness laced Sands' voice. "Go fuck yourself."

"I want to know," El said.

"Then give me my knife, and I'll let you have some firsthand experience," Sands shot back.

"Is that what Barillo did?" El asked. "Used a knife to take out your eyes?"

"Oh no. That would be too tacky," Sands said. He spoke in his trademark drawl, but every word was like brittle glass, and El winced to hear them. Surely he had to be cutting his mouth to shreds with those words. "I believe it was something of Dr. Guevara's own invention. Part drill, part pincers. Very creative, actually. You'd think the man ripped people's eyes out every day."

El felt sick again. Since the day a man named Moco had shot him in the hand and started him on his dark path, he had seen some terrible things done to people. But this cruelty went beyond anything he had heard of.

The pity he had felt earlier was back. "Madre de Dios," he breathed.

"Are you going to do anything useful, or just sit there and ask me shtupid questions?" Sands asked. Judging by his last few words, the painkillers had obviously begun to take effect. It wouldn't be long before he was asleep. Hopefully for several hours.

El shrugged. "That depends on what you consider useful."

Sands was silent for a long time. Just when El thought he had fallen asleep, he said, "What are you going to do with me?"

"I do not know," El said honestly.

"Thass very comforting," Sands sighed. He was almost out of it.

"All I can promise you is this," El said. "You will live to see the morning. That is all I can offer you." The moment the words were out of his mouth, he winced. It was a hard habit to break, using words like "see" and "look", when talking to a blind man. It was all the harder to stop doing it when the blind man in question used those very words himself all the time.

"I'd like to see morning," Sands whispered. There was a note of longing in his voice. It was the drugs talking, El knew, but even that cold rationalization could not stop the sharp knife-twist of sympathy that settled in his chest.

"El?"

"Sí?"

"Did you lock the front door?"

"No," he said. "It does not close. I broke it when I left this morning."

"Shit," Sands breathed. And then he was deeply asleep.

El looked at him for a long time. After a while he rose to his feet and walked toward the front of the house. He gazed at the door hanging crookedly from its bottom two hinges only. The gap at the top was not big enough to let a man through, but it was still big enough to worry El.

He grabbed the door and manhandled it erect. He shoved it into the frame and threw the bolt quickly, before it could realize it wasn't meant to stand upright anymore. He stood back cautiously, but the door stayed put. There was a narrow sliver of black space around the top section of the door, but it was only half an inch wide, so it no longer concerned him.

With a satisfied nod, he turned around and made his way into the back bedroom again. He stood in the doorway for a moment, just listening to Sands' breathing. When he was sure the man was truly asleep, he sat down in the far corner and tilted his head back against the wall.

Five minutes later, he was sound asleep.

*******


	5. An Honest Mistake

An Honest Mistake

Disclaimer: El and Sands belong to Robert Rodriguez, not me. I'm sure they're very happy that is the case. RR would never do the things to them that I do.

Rating: Big PG-13 for violence. We're getting ever closer to an R rating

Summary: Sands screws up, and El makes a choice.

Author's Note: Thanks as always to Melody, and to everyone who has written me or left a review.

And I sure hope I'm not the the only one doing a dance of joy for Johnny's Oscar nomination. Hearing that announcement this morning made my whole damn day. bg

****

Sands woke before dawn. The air in the house was the coolest it ever got, and outside the broken window the world was hushed.

He lay very still, testing his body. Every inch of him ached as though he had been beaten. A tight band of pain circled his midsection, cutting him neatly in two. His throat was raw and it felt like ZZ Top was playing the world's loudest concert inside his skull, fuzzy guitars and all.

In other words, he felt fine.

Slowly he pushed himself up on his elbows. Inside his skull, ZZ Top turned the amplifiers up to 11, and he hissed in pain. The only good news was that the cold chills seemed to be gone, and the dry desert heat of his fever was now just a sauna where someone had bumped the dial up one degree too high. Whatever pills the doctor had given him, at least some of them were doing what they were supposed to do.

When he was sitting up as much as possible, he listened. Ahead and to his right, he heard El's even breathing. Long scrutiny laid to rest any doubts that El might be shamming; the mariachi was truly asleep.

Scorn curled Sands' lower lip. It was a miracle El had survived this long, if he had a habit of falling asleep in front of his enemies.

He took a deep breath and rose to his feet in what was supposed to be one smooth motion, but what turned out to be one ungainly lurch off the mattress. His knees buckled and he staggered forward, pinwheeling his arms, trying desperately to stay on his flailing feet. Somehow he made it to the wall with the broken window, where he was able to lean forward and brace his weight on his hands.

He let his knees sag a little more, then reached down and unzipped his fly. He pissed out the window, feeling goosebumps break out on his fevered skin at contact with the morning air.

He knew the only reason El had fallen asleep was that El believed him too sick to be a threat. Which meant El had underestimated him.

El Mariachi had just made a very large mistake.

He tucked himself back inside and zipped up again. Truthfully he had no desire to kill El. Why should he? His beef was with the cartels. The days of worrying about keeping the balance were long gone. Nowadays his thoughts ran more toward wholesale slaughter.

He staggered back toward the mattress, but he miscounted the steps. His foot struck the unyielding corner, and he went sprawling. He tried to duck and roll, but his limbs would not cooperate. He landed facedown on the floor, hard. Pain blasted through him. Every muscle in his body locked, so he couldn't even scream.

From the corner, El decided that this was a good moment to learn how to be a smartass. "Have a nice trip?" With his thick accent, it came out, "treep."

Sands ignored this. He was too busy trying to regain control of his treacherous body.

Thankfully El seemed to have exhausted his supply of wit. The mariachi sat very still in the corner, saying nothing.

Sands became suddenly aware that when he had fallen, his sunglasses had slipped. They barely clung to the tip of his nose now, and the left earpiece dangled against his cheek.

Hot rage slammed into him. He _never_ took off his sunglasses. The only people who ever saw the ruins of his face were his victims, just before he killed them. And here he was giving out a free peepshow, with El Mariachi having a front row seat. The only thing missing was the guy out in the lobby selling popcorn.

"See something you like?" he snarled, unconsciously echoing Ajedrez's last words to him.

"I'm not sure," El said.

Having expected a simple, "yes," this response caught Sands off guard. So instead of telling El to fuck off, he just rearranged the sunglasses and sat up. He had to sink his teeth into his lower lip to stay silent against the pain that surged through his stomach, but he managed it. Barely. "What the fuck is going on here?"

El did not pretend to misunderstand. "I do not know."

Sands scooted up so he was sitting on the edge of the mattress, his arms wrapped about his body, cradling his hurt. His head pounded sickly and he wanted to lie down, but he refused to give in to his body's weakness. Not in front of El Mariachi. Some things were just not permissible. "You came here to kill me. So why haven't you?"

"I don't know," El said. To his credit, he sounded confused.

"Uh-huh." He offered El a quick grin. "You know, as far as cold-blooded killers go, you've really got that all-muscle-and-no-brains part down pat."

"Is that what you think I am?" asked El.

"Aren't you?" Sands returned. He realized he was immensely enjoying himself. It had been a long time since he had carried on such a lengthy conversation with anyone, and even longer since there had been anyone he could match wits with.

"I don't know what I am," El said softly.

Sands didn't like the tone of those words. He wasn't about to start playing Sigmund "tell me about your mother" Freud with someone whose life was so fucked up he didn't even have a real name.

And then he was saved. From outside he heard voices. Quiet, and trying to be even quieter, but very definitely voices.

His head snapped up and turned toward the window. El was still talking, so he shushed the mariachi with a curt hiss. The pain and fever were forgotten in a rush of adrenaline. It had always been like this. When it was showtime, he forgot about everything except the desire to kill, and the need to survive.

"What is it?" El whispered.

"Men. Two of them." Crouched over, he hurried to the window, keeping to the left of the opening. He could hear them clearer over here. They were discussing the best way to break into the house. Fast and clean, one of them said. No mistakes.

"Only two?" El asked.

Sands backed away from the window and stood up when he judged he was clear. He walked over to El and held out his hand. "Give me a gun."

"No," El said immediately.

"Give me a fucking gun!" Sands demanded. "I am not going to sit here blind and helpless while some cartel assholes think they can get the drop on me."

In the silence that followed, he could almost hear what El was thinking. _But you are blind and helpless._

That pissed him off. A lot. The men outside were not here to sell makeup. They meant business. Deadly business. And here was this clown in a fucking mariachi getup trying to deny him the chance to stay alive. Thoroughly enraged, Sands made a swift decision. _I'll show you blind and helpless, fuckmook._

El was still sitting down in the corner. Sands was standing in front of him, a little to El's right. He lunged now, using his knee to slam El's head against the wall. Before El could react, he reached down and seized El by the throat, pulling the mariachi up off the floor, again giving El's skull a hard rap against the wall.

Although he had been caught off guard at first, El was quick to recover. He lashed out with both hands, landing hard blows that nearly knocked Sands off his feet.

That, of course, was not allowed. Sands kicked El in the ribs as hard as he could, causing El to cry out and involuntary double over.

This _was_ allowed. In fact, it was perfect. When he slammed El's head against the wall for the third time, he had more room to work with. The solid thunk of bone meeting plaster filled him with vicious satisfaction.

El slumped. Sands followed him down and deftly plucked the pistol from the waistband of El's jeans. "Thanks," he said.

The men were in the house now. He could hear them moving through the halls. They probably thought they were being stealthy, but to Sands, they sounded as loud as a herd of buffalo.

He stepped over El, who was writhing weakly on the floor, and made his way over to the bedroom door. He had used this house as his hideout for years, and he knew it by heart. He slotted himself into the narrow space between the open door and the wall, the pistol held in front of his chest with both hands.

The men in the hall drew nearer. Sands waited. He was feeling no pain.

And then several things happened at once.

The men came into the room. One of them shouted. Sands fired. A man screamed.

"No!" El cried. "Stop!"

The man who had screamed fell to the floor. El shouted again, louder this time, "Don't!"

A hair's-breadth away from pulling the trigger again, Sands froze. Normally he would not have, but something in El's voice gave him pause. 

"You fucker!" This voice was unfamiliar. Heavy boots clomped across the floor. Sands tensed, and raised the gun. 

"Lorenzo, stop!" El roared.

"He shot Fideo!" yelled the strange voice. It sounded much closer now.

"Don't kill him!" El shouted.

Sands decided he had had enough of this shit. He pulled the trigger. A split second later something struck him across the face. The force of the blow spun him around and dropped him to his knees.

He tried to bring the gun about and aim at his assailant. He could hear El shouting, but none of the words made sense over the ringing in his ears. Then he was hit again, and he was falling, falling.

Into a black far deeper than the one that filled his waking hours.

****

When he came to, he was lying facedown on the floor. His hands were bound behind him. Sticky blood covered one side of his face, an itchy sensation that reminded him eerily of the Day of the Dead. He hurt. All over. Mostly his head and stomach. And the fever was back, invisible fire raging merrily through his blood.

El and the man named Lorenzo were talking in urgent Spanish. Or rather, they were arguing.

"What the hell are you protecting him for?"

"I am not."

"The fuck you aren't. Let me kill him."

"No."

"Fideo is dead because of him! He tried to shoot me! How many times has he tried to kill you in the last five days? And now suddenly you're his guardian angel?" The man named Lorenzo spat on the floor. "What the fuck's the matter with you?"

"Is that what you think?" El asked. His voice was quiet.

"Man, I don't know what to think!" Lorenzo yelled.

This Lorenzo guy was not very bright, Sands thought. The tone of El's voice did not encourage shouting right now. In fact, hearing El talk, Sands thought the best course of action right now for everyone involved would be to shut the fuck up. Certainly that was what he planned to do.

And he would have done it too, had Lorenzo not walked over and kicked him in the gut. Against his will, he uttered a choked cry of pain. He tried to curl up, but his body would not obey him.

Someone jacked a clip into a gun. It sounded unnaturally loud in the sudden stillness of the room. Sands held his breath and waited to die.

"What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?" Lorenzo shouted.

"Get away from him," El Mariachi said.

Footsteps walked away. Another set approached. Chains jingle-jangled. The muzzle of a gun was pressed to the back of his head.

Sands grinned, hoping his pain did not show on his face. "Finally. Only took you long enough," he said.

The gun jabbed him. "Give me a reason not to kill you now," El said in his heavily accented English.

Sands said nothing. He had no reasons. He had begun dying in a dusty plaza three years ago, courtesy of Armando Barillo. It was time someone finished the job.

He could hear a harsh note in El's breathing. The gun trembled against his skull and pressed harder. The tension grew until it became almost unbearable. Yet nothing happened. Sands began to grow irritated. He wished El would just get on with it.

Lorenzo suddenly said, "What the fuck is that?"

"Someone's knocking at the front door," Sands said helpfully. He thought it showed remarkable restraint on his part not to add, _you fucker._

El whapped him with the gun. "Shut up. It's the doctor."

"How do you know?" Lorenzo asked.

"He said he would come early," El said. "Go let him in."

After a moment of silence, Lorenzo walked from the room. "Okay," Sands said. "Now's your chance. Kill me."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" El said in disgust.

"Well, frankly, no," Sands said. "But it beats lying here all tied up and nowhere to go. This is very boring, El."

Shattering the early morning stillness, a loud crash reverberated through the front half of the house. Gunshots rang out. Sands jerked in surprise, lifting his head so he could hear better, ignoring the way El's pistol suddenly felt like it was half-buried in his skull.

Footsteps ran down the hall. Lorenzo was yelling.

And then suddenly he wasn't.

The gun at his head vanished. A hand seized his upper arm and hauled him to his feet, nearly dislocating his shoulder. A deep voice in his ear hissed, "If I find out you tipped them off, I will--"

El did not finish the threat. Still gripping Sands by the arm, he whirled around and ran for the window.

Helpless not to follow, Sands went with him.

******

Author's Note: I truly never meant to kill both Fideo and Lorenzo. It just...happened. That's what I get for writing a story about a psychopath.


	6. The Strangest Holdup in Mexican History

The Strangest Holdup in Mexican History

Disclaimer: I don't own El and Sands. That privilege belongs to Robert Rodriguez.

Rating: PG-13 for language and mild violence

Summary: So you're on the run from the cartel. What do you do next, El?

Author's Note: Many thanks to Melody, who never lets me get away with being lazy, or taking the easy way out. I love you, girl.

****

El ran, dragging Sands with him. He forced the CIA officer out the window ahead of him, taking vicious delight in watching Sands go sprawling in the dirt.

Two men were standing outside the window, no doubt to ensure that no one tried to sneak out that way. El shot them both, leaned down and grabbed Sands again, and took off running toward the back yard, all without breaking stride.

The house had once boasted beautiful gardens lovingly tended by a well-paid staff. But the house had been abandoned for years and now the gardens had gone wild. El found himself running through the start of a tropical rain forest. He put on a burst of speed. His car was a block away – if they could make it that far, there was a chance they could get out of this alive.

Shots sounded from behind him. A flowering vine on his left exploded in a hail of pink petals. El twisted to the right, ducking behind a tall Joshua tree. Sands, unable to see where he was going, slammed right into it, bloodying his nose and uttering a string of foul curses.

El considered letting him go. Sands was only slowing him down. But back at the house his impulse had been to take Sands with him, and he had long ago learned to obey his spontaneous nature – it had kept him alive over the years. And that meant keeping Sands with him. For a little while longer at least.

He ran on, making sharp veering turns and dodging around the vegetation. Some of the wild growth of the garden cleared, and El saw a fence ahead. Inwardly he groaned. The fence was six feet high, all solid wood planking. A privacy fence, and a very good one. On his own it would not be a problem, but there was no way Sands could scale it, not injured as he was and with his hands bound behind him.

Then he saw he would not have to. There was a gap in the fence, cleverly cut by people wishing to use the house for all manner of activities without being seen doing so. A large section of the boards had been cut out and then replaced in the hole, making the fence appear intact to a casual eye.

The shots aimed at them from behind were getting closer to hitting their targets. El ran straight for the cutout. At the last second he thought to wonder what he would do if something sat behind the boards, like a tractor or a lightpost, and he shoved Sands ahead of him.

Sands crashed into the fence and stumbled on through, cursing El in a mixture of English and Spanish that the mariachi might have found amusing at any other time in his life. He ducked his head as he ran through the gap created by splintered boards. Just as he came out on the other side, pain erupted in the upper part of his right shoulder. He staggered and nearly went down on one knee; only Sands' presence kept him upright, for the CIA officer was somehow still on his feet and running.

"Shit!" El hollered. He hated being shot.

On the bright side, he could see his car now.

He plunged his left hand into the pocket of his jeans, searching for his car keys. It occurred to him what a cosmic joke it would be if he had left them in the house, and then his fingers closed over them. He yanked them free so hard the pocket turned inside out and flapped against his thigh like a limp fish.

"Stop!" He threw Sands against the car. Sands slumped against the door, gasping for breath. El jammed the key into the lock and gave it a hard turn to the left. He pushed Sands aside, opened the door, and gave Sands a shove in the direction of the front seat. "Get in!"

Without waiting to see what his unwilling passenger was doing, he ran around the hood of the car. Hot blood trickled down his back from the wound in his shoulder, and his arm was already beginning to throb. 

He unlocked his door and got inside. In the rearview mirror he saw two men leap through the shattered fence, and a wordless growl of frustration escaped him. He thrust the key into the ignition, started the car, slammed it into drive and flattened the accelerator to the floor.

The engine let out a startled roar, and the car leaped forward. The two men in the rearview mirror grew smaller and smaller, and at last disappeared altogether.

When their pursuers were finally out of sight, El dared to relax his speed. He let the car slow down, and looked over at Sands.

Immediately he took his foot off the pedal. "Sands?"

Sands was slumped against the door, his head hanging low. He was terribly pale, and he was shaking. His sunglasses were crooked, revealing one empty eyesocket. Blood still trickled from his nose, and more ran in a fresh stream from his mouth where El had hit him yesterday. A long splinter of wood was caught in his hair, almost like an Indian feather. Another stuck out from the collar of his shirt like the world's smallest arrow.

El reached over – gasping at the pain in his shoulder – and yanked the splinter free. The end was painted bright red. El grimaced and dropped it onto the floor of the car.

Sands flinched. "Fucker."

"I just saved your life," El said. "You should be grateful."

"Yeah? Why do you keep doing that?" Sands asked. He leaned his forehead against the window. "I guess back there at the hotel I must have shot you in some vital part of your brain responsible for logical thinking."

The question totally threw him. The simple answer was that he didn't know. He should have killed Sands a hundred times over by now. But something always prevented him from pulling the trigger. He didn't understand it, and he didn't like it. And that pissed him off.

He could beat himself up over it, or he could just accept what he had done. And it was simpler to take his anger out on Sands. He spared a brief glance into the rearview mirror to make sure no one was behind him, then slammed on the brakes. Sands went flying into the dashboard. "I could let you out now if you want," he offered.

Sands made a choked noise of pain that actually made El feel sorry for him. "That's very kind of you," he muttered through clenched teeth. "But I think I'll pass."

El's sympathy died a quick death. "Then shut the fuck up," he said coldly. He started to drive again.

****

While stopped at a traffic light, it suddenly occurred to him that the cartel had seen him driving away. They knew what car he was driving.

He was going to have to ditch the car.

"Shit," he swore. The car was new. He hated to give it up so soon.

He began looking for somewhere to pull over. The street they were currently on was populated with a series of strip malls and stores. It was not yet nine o'clock in the morning, and traffic was light. Most of the stores weren't even open, and their parking lots were empty.

Save for one. He nodded grimly when he saw the pharmacy. That would do.

He pulled into the parking lot and stopped the car. "Where are we?" Sands asked.

El ignored him. He took a deep breath, taking stock of the situation. They had fled the house so fast, he was just now beginning to realize what had happened.

Fideo was dead. Lorenzo was dead.

He had two guns and two spare clips, one in each pocket of his jacket. He had the knife he had taken from Sands. Some cigarettes and a pack of matches. A money clip. That was it, the sum and total of his possessions right now. His guitar case was back at Lorenzo's house.

Not Lorenzo's house anymore, he thought. Grief tore through him like a knife wound. He had lost two friends today. They had gone to the house to see if he was all right, because he had not returned last night. They had gone to check on him, and now they were dead.

And one of them was dead because of the man currently sitting in the front seat. El gave Sands a long look. The CIA officer was slumped against the window, barely conscious. He could get out of the car and walk away, leaving Sands locked inside for anyone to find. The idea had a bitter appeal to it.

Then he shook his head. The corner of his mouth crooked in something resembling a smile. He could lock Sands in the car and walk away, but Sands would not be caught. Somehow or another Sands would get free and escape, to disappear into legend yet again.

No. El scowled. Not this time. He had Sands, and he was going to make sure the man did not get away again.

He opened his door and stepped outside. The morning was already blazing hot. He stumbled a little when his feet hit the pavement, and a wave of fresh pain broke over him. Blood ran down his back.

He walked around the car and opened the passenger door. He pulled the knife from his belt and removed the leather scabbard. He grabbed Sands and pushed him facedown onto the dash, wringing a pained cry from the American. "Hold still, unless you want me to cut off your fingers," he said.

He cut the rope binding Sands' wrists. "This is the _pharmacía_," he said. "I am going inside to get some things. Wait here. If I come back and find you gone, I will make it my mission in life to hunt you down. _Comprende_?"

Sands nodded. He did not seem inclined to sit up. "Fuck off," he whispered. He was shivering again with fever.

El closed the passenger door and sheathed the knife. He stuck it in his belt and snugged his jacket over it, hiding it and the two guns he wore from view.

****

The air conditioning was on full blast, and it was cold inside the pharmacy. El stalked up and down the aisles, gathering what he needed. Painkillers, antibiotics, gauze, bandages, alcohol. He prayed that his dark jacket would hide the bloodstain on his shoulder, or that the increasing lurch to his step would not be noticeable.

The cashier barely glanced at the purchases as she rang them up. She gave El the total and snapped her gum.

El reached for his money clip. He was just starting to unfold the bills when the door to the pharmacy opened, and Sands walked in. Holding a gun.

El's eyes widened. _Stupid, stupid!_ shrilled his brain. He had forgotten all about the pistol in the glove compartment.

The cashier spared a bored glance for her new customer, then did a double take. The blood drained from her face, and she screamed.

Oriented by the scream, Sands sauntered over to the counter. He barely missed walking into a display of handcream. "_Buenos dias, señorita._" He grinned.

The cashier's hands shot up in the air. She moaned in terror.

"El?" Sands called. "What's taking so long? Are you still trying to decide if those condoms really are ribbed for her pleasure?"

Fury made El's throat constrict, so it was hard to force the words out. "What are you--"

Sands started in surprise. "Ah, there you are. Ready to go?"

"Put that away," El demanded. He was still stupidly holding his money clip, he realized.

"Did she bag everything yet?" Sands asked. The gun was not quite aimed at the cashier's head, but it was close enough. Too close. El did not dare make a move. He could try, but Sands would have time to get off at least two shots before he took Sands down. He was going to have to talk his way out of this one.

"I will," the cashier babbled. "I'll do anything you want. Just don't hurt me, please!"

Sands looked like he was about two steps away from passing out. Under the bright fluorescent lights, the blood on his face and beads of sweat on his brow took on a crazy glitter. But he was still grinning. "How about you just put everything in a bag, sugarbutt? And of course we'll be taking whatever you've got in that cash register."

"No," El growled. "We pay for it."

"I don't think so," Sands said. He had adjusted his aim ever-so-slightly when the cashier spoke, and now he curled his finger about the trigger. The girl was busy throwing El's purchases into a plastic bag, and she thankfully did not see this. 

But El saw it. He knew Sands would shoot the girl without hesitation. In fact, he was pretty sure Sands was going to shoot her anyway. "All right," he said. He put the money clip back in his pocket. "We take the goods and we go. That's all. All right?"

The cashier opened the drawer to the register and began scooping out the bills. "It isn't much," she said. Her voice broke, and she started to cry. "We've only been open for an hour."

"It'll do," Sands said brightly. His arm began to tremble, making the gun's aim waver.

El sidled a step closer to him. But as he watched, Sands almost seemed to glare at his trembling hand. The shakes slowed, and then stopped altogether. The gun zeroed back in on the girl's head. El stared at him in awe. He had never known anyone to have such terrible self-control before.

The bag was full. The money sat on top of the drugs and medical supplies. "That's it," he said. "Let's go."

Sands did not move. "Wait. Got any cigarettes, sugarbutt?"

The shelves behind the cashier were well-stocked. She nodded, moaning in the back of her throat.

Sands, of course, could not see that nod. A scowl of impatience crossed his face. Not wanting him to speak, El said quickly, "Give us two cartons." He pointed to the brand he normally smoked.

The cashier hurried to stuff the cartons into the bag. She sniffled and whimpered.

El grabbed the bag. "Let's go."

Sands doffed an imaginary hat with his free hand. "_Muchas gracias._" He turned around and started for the door.

El hurried after him. 

****

In the parking lot, he said, "We have to leave the car."

Sands stopped walking. "What?"

"They saw it," El said. "They will be looking for it."

"Oh my Christ," Sands swore. He sighed. He turned back toward the pharmacy. "Well?"

El frowned. "Well, what?"

"Well hadn't you better go in there and get that girl's car keys? Unless you were planning to walk from here on out."

El looked at him. Sands was hurt and sick. It probably wouldn't require much effort to overpower him and take the gun back. But then again, he was hurt now too, and the pain in his shoulder was only growing worse with every passing minute. Getting the gun from Sands might be more trouble than it was worth.

Perhaps sensing the turn of his thoughts, Sands pointed the gun at him. "El?" he asked lightly. "Would you like to get your butt in gear?"

There were other options available to them, but none so quick and easy as stealing the cashier's car. And even though he was disgusted by the thought of taking the poor girl's car, El knew he would do it. Because he was a survivor. That meant doing whatever he had to do in order to stay alive.

"Wait here," he said. He thrust the plastic bag at Sands. "Take this. I'll go get the keys."

Sands smiled. "Good man."

El walked back into the pharmacy.

******


	7. Sanctuary

Sanctuary

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

Rating: PG-13 for language

Summary: Wounds are healed, El tries to figure some things out, and a new hunt begins.

Author's Note: As always, a big hug to Melody. And also to Adrejon for the e-mail that not only made my day, it made my entire year. 

****

El was not afraid to return to Lorenzo's house. It was not the cartel's style to set ambushes for him. After every encounter with them, they let him drop below the radar for a time and simply waited for him to surface again, as they knew he eventually must. So he felt safe enough going to Lorenzo's.

Sands followed him in, still holding the gun. His step was more unsteady than ever, and El wondered how much of that was due to his condition, and how much due to the fact that he was now in an unfamiliar setting, where he was truly lost in the dark.

"What now, kemosabe?" Sands asked.

It was a good question. They could not stay here. The police would arrive at the yellow stone house and find the bodies. And depending on how quickly they moved, sometime in mid-afternoon they would be here, looking for anyone who might be able to ID Lorenzo and Fideo.

They would be buried alone, El thought. He would not be there for them, this one last time. After everything they had done for him, he was going to abandon them. 

Suddenly he was furious. They had gone to the house because _he_ had gone to the house. And the reason he had gone to the house?

That reason was standing right beside him.

In one smooth motion he drew his gun and seized Sands, yanking him close and jamming the gun against Sands' head. "You killed my friends," he snarled.

Not to be outdone, Sands shoved the muzzle of his pistol against El's stomach. "Yeah, but not on purpose."

"You shot Fideo," El said fiercely. He kept his voice low. He was afraid if he started shouting he would never stop. "How is that not on purpose?"

"For your information, _El_, I don't just randomly kill people anymore," Sands shot back. El could feel the fever coming off him in waves of sick heat, and it made him recoil. "I made an honest mistake when I shot your friend. I didn't know who he was."

El lost the last shred of his temper. He slammed the gun into Sands' face, sending Sands reeling. But he did not let go of the slighter man's arm, and he brought the gun in again, pressing the barrel to Sands' temple hard enough wring a grunt of pain from the man. His finger trembled over the trigger. "Cartel doesn't come in pairs!" he shouted. "And you ought to know that!"

"Fuck you," Sands said wearily. Blood welled up from a fresh cut on his lip. He had not lost his grip on the gun, and he still aimed it at El. "You don't know what I've been doing for the last three years. I've seen 'em in all sizes and shapes." He gave El a cold smile. "I used to throw shapes, you know. Now I just kill them." That smile disappeared. "And when I said I don't randomly kill people anymore, that doesn't include you."

The threat meant nothing to El. Even his furious grief was beginning to fade. Cold numbness was dropping over him, the detachment he had been forced to cultivate throughout the years in order to survive the tragedies that had befallen him. In a way he welcomed it. Numbness was preferable to pain.

The smell of blood was strong in the air. He lowered his gun, his mouth twisting in disgust. "You stink," he said. He gave Sands a violent push, suddenly unable to stand being so close to the man anymore.

Sands staggered backward. He bumped into the sagging armchair that had been Fideo's favorite, and fell heavily to the floor. He groaned, but did not let go of the gun.

El stared impassively down at him. Sands tried to get back up, but could not do it. He had finally reached the end of his strength. El was not surprised. He was in fact amazed that Sands had lasted this long.

With a sigh, Sands let his head drop back to the carpet. "You gonna shoot me now?"

"I should," El said.

Sands nodded. He rested the gun on his chest, one finger still curled about the trigger. After a time, when it became clear that El was not going to do it, he said, "Why not?"

"I don't know," El said. He shoved the gun back into his belt. He leaned down and took hold of Sands' left hand. "Get up." He straightened back up, dragging Sands off the floor.

"Hey!" Sands scrambled to get to his feet before El pulled his arm out of his socket.

"You can't pass out now," El said coldly. He had no problem with dragging Sands behind him by the hair. "We are not staying here."

Sands did not ask where they were going. Possibly he didn't care, but El thought it was more likely that he knew he would not receive an answer to the question. He swayed on his feet, and his head drooped, but he did not fall. "All right."

Reluctantly impressed in spite of himself, El let go of him. "I'm here for my guitar."

"I should have known," Sands sighed.

****

The doctor was not surprised to see them. 

****

They stayed a week with the doctor. He had not wanted to let them in, but money could work wonders, and he was a good man at heart, so in the end he agreed to take care of them.

El spent most of his time sitting outside in the sun, smoking. His right arm was in a sling and he could not play guitar. He felt bereft without his music, the one thing that had always been there for him, even through the darkest times of his life. In the evenings the doctor came outside and smoked with him.

On the first day they had dumped the car that had belonged to the girl at the pharmacy. The police had found it, the doctor reported, but they had no leads. El had received this news with a silent nod.

As they sat outside on the second night the doctor asked, "Are you still planning to kill him when he is healthy?"

He did not have an answer to that question. 

His life had ended the day Marquez had killed Carolina and his daughter. He had died right there beside them. Afterward he had tried to pick up the pieces of his life, only to find that they no longer fit together to make a whole. There were gaps now, pieces missing that could never be recovered.

So he had turned to the only thing he had left: his music. When the numbing storm of his grief had faded, he had left his guitar case with Fideo and Lorenzo. He had found the town where the people devoted themselves to making guitars, and he had become one of them.

But Sands had ended all that. Sands had reminded him that things like vengeance could be postponed, but not halted. Sands had forced him to return to the world, with all its petty cruelties and loose loyalties. So he had come back, and he had lived in Sands' world -- what most people would call the real world -- and he had hated every moment of it. That world was not for him. He was a mariachi, not a killer.

He had killed Marquez and he had saved El Presidente, and then he had walked away from everything once again. He had chosen solitude, and a life on the run. He did not want to live in a world where good men could be killed on the whims of a madman, and where good women were gunned down for choosing love over fear.

Too late, he had realized that there was no going back for him, not after the things he had seen and done. He walked in both worlds now. He had seen too much. He was deeply disenchanted with his life, but he did not know how to change things. He did not even know if change was possible anymore for someone like him.

He had been given a choice, and he had chosen simplicity. Rather than think about anything, he merely acted. He had cut the flimsy ties that had begun connecting him to the world again, saying farewell to Fideo and Lorenzo, and going underground.

His friends would have been surprised, but the last person he had seen in Culiacan had been the former FBI agent, Ramirez. He had met the man purely by accident, in the church. He had returned for one last visit, needing the dim coolness of religion in order to forgive himself for what he had just done. He had been praying for the strength to endure his self-imposed exile. Ramirez had been leaving the confessional booth. They had seen each other and for a moment their eyes had met. Ramirez had nodded, and then continued on down the aisle.

A few minutes later, El had left the church. The next day had found him running again. Because he had nothing else. 

So he had fled from the cartels, and he had tried to find peace in music and solitude, and he had been successful at neither. Because the cartels had found him, and he had not found peace at all.

Curiously enough, the last two weeks had been utterly devoid of peace, and yet El Mariachi had not been this satisfied in many long years. When he was around Sands, his entire body thrummed with energy. His every sense was attuned to his surroundings. He felt ready for anything. He knew all this was merely a reaction to being around such a dangerous enemy, but that did not change the simple fact that Sands made him feel alive again.

Even the quiet pace of the hours spent in the doctor's house could not make El relax. He slept deeply, but from the moment he woke, he was taut with tension. He reminded himself to stay alert, and always, always, keep his guard up.

He kept watch over his enemy, although at first there was not much need. Sands was very sick. He was badly hurt. The doctor was able to remove the bullet that had caused all the trouble, but the wound was slow to heal. He had broken his collarbone in the plunge through the fence, but he had not said a word to El – it was the doctor who told the mariachi about this. But in spite of all this, he suffered in silence. He did not ask the doctor for more drugs, or even make any demands at all. At first he simply lay in bed, sometimes shaking when the chills came over him, but mostly not moving at all.

By the end of the week, however, he was up and moving around again. El had to admire his persistence. He watched as Sands explored the doctor's house, learning to navigate the unfamiliar halls and doorways. He was fascinated by how Sands would run his hand over an object so he could feel its contours and its position. Sands checked everything for sharp corners or protruding limbs, and once he had identified where something was supposed to be, it was not allowed to be out of place.

And his hearing was incredible. At all times he knew where everyone was in the house. He could tell what time of day it was by the sounds of nature coming through the window. When he spoke to someone, he looked right at them, finding their face in the dark through the sound of their voice alone.

During that week, El's respect for Sands, unwilling though it was, increased tenfold. Which was fortunate for Sands, because that respect was the only thing keeping him alive.

El did not attend the funerals for Lorenzo and Fideo. He dared not show himself. He did not think the cartel would look for him there, but he could not take the chance. And he hated funerals anyway. The cloying scent of flowers, the pasted-on smiles of the people who had come to gawk at the living, the finality of that dark hole in the ground. He hated having his grief made public for all to see. No, he would mourn for his friends in private, the way he always had done.

The grief for them kept sneaking up on him, surprising him when he least expected it. After all the loved ones he had lost, he should have been well-versed by now in how to handle pain. But time and again he had been proven wrong, and this instance was no exception. He genuinely mourned for Fideo and Lorenzo, and he missed them terribly.

The only thing that made his grief bearable was the thought that one day he would make Sands pay.

****

On the eighth day, El woke before dawn. He thought he had heard something.

He sat up, bare-chested, his arm free of the sling for the first time. The room was dark and the house was still. On a distant street, a car started up.

El swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood up. He reached for the pistol he kept under his pillow and carefully made his way over to the bedroom door. He listened hard, but the sound that had woken him did not repeat itself.

It did not matter. He knew what it was.

He let himself out the front door, not bothering to shut it behind him. On bare feet, he ran the length of the porch and leaped over the railing, landing in the grass of the side yard.

Sands was just coming around the side of the house. He reared back in shock at the jingling sound of El's landing, and pulled his pistol. "You're up awfully early, aren't you?" In his other hand he carried a small duffel bag by the handles. His clothing was clean and repaired, thanks to the doctor. The bruising on his face had faded, and except for the fact that he was still too pale beneath his tan, he looked almost healthy. "What are you doing out here?"

"You know what I'm doing," El said.

"Yes, well, I'm afraid this is where we part ways, El. It's been nice knowing you, and all that jazz."

El shook his head. He hated this man, but he had to admit Sands sure had a pair. "Where are you going?"

"El." Sands gave him a tight smile. "I'm sure you're a very nice mariachi, behind that gruff exterior. But it's time I was going. So." He waggled the gun a little. "If you wouldn't mind just stepping aside, I'll be on my way."

"No." El thumbed the safety off his pistol. "Unless you want a brand-new bullet hole in you."

Sands' smile disappeared. "Get out of my way, _El._"

"Where are you going?" El asked again.

"Far away from here," Sands said.

"Last chance," he warned. He thought about putting a bullet in the ground at Sands' feet, then decided against it. This was a quiet neighborhood. If anybody heard a gunshot they would call the police.

Sands' jaw clenched. He seemed to be thinking the same thing, about the noise of a gunshot. At last he said, "Chihuahua. Your good friend the doctor told me he's heard rumors of cartel trying to establish a presence there. I thought I would go check it out."

El frowned in surprise. He hadn't known Sands and the doctor to talk about the cartel or anything at all, in fact, except the obligatory medical talk.

"Now, is that good enough for you, or do you need an address?" Sands asked. He spoke lightly enough, but El was starting to learn that the more casual Sands sounded, the more dangerous he was. That light-hearted tone did not fool him one bit.

"You can't even see where you're going," he said. "But you never stop. Do you really think you can single-handedly destroy the cartels of Mexico?"

"Maybe." Sands shrugged. "But I do know I can single-handedly fuck them up. So that's what I do. I don't throw shapes anymore. I throw bullets."

"You kill shapes," El said, repeating what Sands had said to him in Lorenzo's house.

"Exactly. Now move."

El lowered the gun. "I will find you again," he vowed.

"Gosh, El, the way you say that it sounds positively romantic." The gun in Sands' hand did not waver one inch.

"I mean it," El said.

"I know you do." Sands tucked the gun into the waistband of his black jeans. "See you around." Bold as brass, he walked across the lawn. When his feet hit the sidewalk he hesitated, turned left, and began walking.

El watched him go, marveling again at the strength of will that could keep a man moving so confidently through the dark. When Sands was out of sight, he went back into the house.

The doctor was standing in the living room, wearing a bathrobe. "Has he gone?"

"Sí." El glared at him.

"Do not look at me that way," the doctor protested. "I did not let him go. You did."

"But you knew he was leaving," El said. "You told him to go to Chihuahua."

"I had to tell him someplace," the doctor said. He dropped his gaze to stare at the floor.

A cold smile tugged at El's mouth. "There is no cartel in Chihuahua?"

"There may be," the doctor said. "But if there is, I am not aware of it."

El supposed it didn't matter. Sands would find somewhere to go, someplace where he could shoot first and ask questions later. Someplace where the legend would rise anew, the legend of the blind gunfighter always dressed in black.

"You should let him be," the doctor said.

El gazed at him. The old man looked frightened of his own audacity, but that did not stop him. "I am only saying, he is not a threat to you."

"No?" El asked. He lifted the hair on the right side of his head, so the doctor could see the almost-healed mark left by Sands' bullet.

"He is lonely and scared," the doctor said. "No good can come of this. Let him be."

"We will see," El promised.

He would give Sands one day. Then starting tomorrow, he was going on the hunt. Why not? Carolina and his daughter were long dead. Every friend he had ever had was dead, starting with Quino and Campa and ending with Fideo and Lorenzo. There was no one else. His life was empty now. Empty of love, of friendship. Empty of meaning. 

So he would give himself a meaning. He would give himself a reason to go on living. Beginning tomorrow, he was going to follow Sands' trail. Wherever Sands went, he would be there. Until one day he found his quarry again.

And on that day? Well, only God knew what would happen then.

****

As it turned out, over a year passed before he saw Sands again.

******


	8. Ready or Not, Here I Come

Ready or Not, Here I Come

Disclaimer: I don't own the oh-so-beautiful El Mariachi and the oh-so-psychotic Agent Sands.

Rating: This chapter is definitely rated R for violence and all around nastiness.

Summary: The deadly game begins in earnest.

Author's Note: As much as I love writing action, it can be frustrating sometimes to make sure everyone is seeing the same thing in their heads that I am. So for the sake of clarity, please imagine the bar in this chapter to be the same as Cheech's bar in Desperado. Minus Cheech.

Also, I'd just like to note that these guys are now both officially insane. To everyone who wrote to me, and I wrote back that I was afraid for El? Well....my fears have come true.

*****

As it turned out, over a year passed before he saw Sands again.

****

The owner of the bar was named Bill. He was an American, and El hated him right away. Bill was one of those Americans who came went south of the border thinking to get rich quick off the dumb Mexicans. Most of them realized almost right away that this was not going to happen, and they turned around and went back home. The ones who stayed, like Bill, were bitter and mean.

"Look," Bill said now, "I already told you guys everything I know about him. What are you asking me again for?"

El gave the man a long look. "You didn't tell me."

"Fine." Bill threw up his hands. "He's been coming here for the past two weeks. Sniffing around. Asking about you guys."

The American thought he was cartel, El realized. He nodded. That suited him just fine.

"Now, you guys promised you wouldn't shoot up the bar," Bill said. He had dark eyes and bad skin. "Right? You'll take him out back or something."

"I didn't promise you anything," El said quietly. It did not bother him one bit that this man had ratted on Sands. He finished his beer and set the glass down on the bar.

"Oh, come on, man!" Bill said. He gave El a pleading look, from one buddy to another. "I gotta make a living here, you know."

For a moment El entertained the fantasy of grabbing the bartender's short gray crewcut and slamming his face into the bar. He wrapped his hands about his beer glass and drew in a deep breath through his nose. "You said this is going down tonight?"

"Yeah." Bill nodded. He was starting to look suspiciously at El.

It was not yet five o'clock. The place was almost empty, except for a few drunks slumped at tables scattered throughout the room.

The bar itself was oval-shaped, with the back half of the oval actually being the back wall of the room. Behind the bar was a huge mirror fronted with shelves that held dusty bottles of liquor. There was a cutout in the short curve on the left which Bill the bartender and any help he might have could use to go into the main room. Right now there was no help, but Bill had bragged that the bar was "pretty hopping" around ten or eleven o'clock. Supposedly he had a waitress or two who worked for him during the evenings.

El gave Bill a cold smile. "I am going to sit over there." He pointed to the table nearest the curve in the bar that held the cutout. "You are not going to talk to me, look at me, or even think about me. _Comprende?_"

Bill nodded. "Sure thing. Whatever you want. Just don't go shooting up my bar, okay?" He gave El an ingratiating smile. "And uh, my reward, right? Fifty thousands pesos, right?"

"The men who come here tonight are not supposed to know I am here," El said. "It is important that they do their job without knowing they are being watched."

"Oh!" Bill the bartender tipped El a wink. "I gotcha. You're here to evaluate them."

El wondered what Bill would look like with a broken nose. "You are very clever."

"Ah, well." Bill rocked back on his heels. "Hey, I'm just trying to help out, you know?"

"I do know," El said. He let go of his beer glass before it shattered beneath his hands. 

"Now, ah, about that reward," Bill began.

"That is not my department," El said. He rose from the barstool and walked across the bar toward the bathrooms.

When the door had shut behind him, he moved over to the sink. The mirror was cracked and cloudy, but it reflected his image just fine.

He scarcely recognized himself anymore. The man who stared back at him had long dark hair and piercing dark eyes. There was no warmth in those eyes. It was like looking at two flat stones.

It had taken him a year to find Sands again. Four times he had almost had the man, then Sands had slipped through his fingers somehow. He had long ago stopped being amazed by Sands' ability to smell a trap. 

And every time he lost the trail, he merely started over again, calmly persistent. He knew he would win eventually. One day Sands would not be able to make an escape, and then the hunt would truly be over.

He thought that time had finally come. He had picked up on a lead meant for the cartel, and it had panned out. The cartel presence in this area was still new and disorganized, and although El did not doubt they would show up tonight, he also did not doubt that he would have the upper hand. The men who came here tonight looking for Sands were only going to find death.

And Sands?

El smiled at his image. It was not a happy smile.

****

Bill the bartender was full of shit, but apparently he was not a liar. By nine o'clock the bar was filling up. Loud music played from the jukebox, and the room reeked of beer and tequila. Two waitresses dressed in outfits that looked salvaged from a much fancier cocktail bar squeezed between the tables, bringing drinks and insults to their patrons.

El sat alone at his chosen table. There were four chairs crammed around its small circumference, but no one had even attempted to sit in any of them. His guitar case was under the table. He rested his feet atop it, reassured by the physical contact with his weapons.

Around nine-thirty, four men in dark suits came in. They sat at a table in the corner and ordered drinks, but did not touch them. They watched the door.

El finished his beer and asked for another. The waitress barely glanced at him as he placed his order.

At ten-thirty Sands walked in. He had lost none of his deadly grace since the last time El had seen him. He was dressed all in black, a vest over a long-sleeved shirt, and dark boots and jeans. He made his way through the crowded bar with ease, the fingers of one hand trailing over tables and chairs. The dark sunglasses hid his face. He took a seat along the curved section of the bar, not five feet from El's table.

Outwardly El's expression did not change. Inside, he was grinning that cold grin again.

Sands ordered a tequila with lime. He turned on his barstool so that he faced out into the room.

In the corner, the four men in suits stood up.

Bill the bartender set Sands' drink on the bar and quoted the price. Sands counted out exact change and laid it on the fake wood surface.

The four men in the suits fanned out, walking slowly but steadily forward.

Bill reached for the money. The moment his hand touched the coins, Sands seized his wrist and pulled a gun. He jammed the muzzle of the pistol against Bill's skull and dragged the American halfway across the bar.

El watched all this happen.

Bill shouted in pain and surprise. The patrons of the bar looked around in puzzlement. They saw the gun in Sands' hand. And they saw the four men open their suit jackets to reveal their own weapons.

Panic erupted in the bar. Women screamed. Men overturned tables in their haste to get out of the killing zone.

"I was starting to wonder if you had lost your nerve," Sands remarked to Bill. "If you were ever going to make that call."

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Bill stuttered. He was awkwardly draped across the surface of the bar. He stared at the four men in suits, pleading with his eyes. "I didn't do nothing!"

"No," Sands said.

The four men in suits stopped a few in front of Sands. The bar was almost empty now, except for a few brave – or morbid – souls who lurked in the back corners, wanting to see someone get killed.

And El.

"Hey, man," Bill said. "Look, you've scared away my customers. Put the gun away, man. Come on."

"Your fucking face scares away your customers," Sands said lightly. He dug the gun deep into Bill's skull. "And just because I can't see doesn't mean I am stupid."

No, not stupid, but El could see that this was one fight Sands was not going to win. One of the cartel men had climbed over the bar and was now creeping up behind Bill, on Sands' left. The other three continued to stand in front of him, their guns aimed at his head.

"How much did they promise you, Bill?" Sands asked. He had hold of Bill's right arm with his left hand. His right arm passed under Bill's chin, so he could press the gun to Bill's left temple. "I hope it was worth it."

He pulled the trigger. Bill screamed. But it was not Bill who fell. At the last second Sands had shifted his aim, and the man in the dark suit who had been sneaking up behind Bill was the one who fell.

El sat where he was. Once again he had underestimated Sands.

Things happened very fast after that.

Sands dropped his arm from around Bill's throat and fired again, dropping the man standing leftmost in front of the bar. 

At the same time, Bill stepped up on something behind the bar and threw himself over the wooden cutout. From under his stained jacket, he had produced a silver pistol of his own.

The two remaining cartel members opened fire. One of them aimed at the man flying through the air at them. The other aimed at Sands.

Sands dropped a third man. Bill landed on the fourth. The two of them struck a chair, and they went down in a flurry of limbs and broken wood. Sands brought his gun around and Bill rolled out of the way, and Sands fired, and the fourth man was dead.

Still sitting with his feet resting on his guitar case, El watched it all. He was coldly smiling.

Bill got to his feet, a bit slowly, one hand pressed to his side. "Damn," he grunted in pain. He looked pissed off.

Sands did not move. He still held the gun out, but he subtly shifted his aim so it was no longer pointed at the floor.

El took all this in. He sat so still the sleazy American bartender – who should have known better -- never even looked at him. 

He had to admit to being surprised. He had not guessed Bill and Sands were allies. But it made sense, in a twisted way. Bill would lure cartel here, and Sands would blow them away. They would take the reward money the cartel had brought, and split the money between them. It was quite a nice little scheme, and El had to reluctantly congratulate the slimy bartender for doing such a good job. He had fallen for the act this morning. That pissed him off – it did not make him feel better to think that the cartels had done the exact same thing. He was supposed to be better than them, smarter than them. He wasn't supposed to buy the same horseshit they did.

"You got 'em all," Bill said. 

"Not quite," Sands said, and shot Bill.

The bartender fell backward and landed heavily on the floor. He lay amid the broken kindling of the chair and the spreading pools of blood emanating from the cartel members. He raised one hand into the air. His eyes were wide and confused. "Hey," he said weakly. "Hey, Sands."

Sands cocked his head. "Yes?"

With the toe of his boot, El undid the clasps on his guitar case.

"I thought we had a deal," Bill wheezed. Blood ran from the hole in his chest. "I help you, you help me."

"Deal's off," Sands said. He sounded supremely bored. 

"Why, man?" Bill implored. His injury was not fatal, El saw. There was still a chance he could get out of this alive, and he knew it. What he didn't know – yet – was that this was not going to happen. Men like Sands did not give chances. They took them away.

"Because I don't trust you," Sands said. "You rat me out now because I tell you to, but what's to prevent you from ratting me out in the future because you _want_ to?"

"I wouldn't do that to you," Bill babbled. "You know I wouldn't."

Sands gave him a thin smile. "Do I?" He pulled the trigger. Twice.

In the silence that fell, the last remaining souls in the bar ran for the door. Sands did not even look up as they hurried out.

El sat where he was. He wanted to see what happened next.

Sands stood still for a moment. He put the gun in a shoulder holster that had been cleverly concealed by the black vest. As if he did this sort of thing every day, he began rifling through the dead men's pockets. When he got blood on his hands he calmly wiped them clean on the men's clothes. He took all their money, and even some of their jewelry, unerringly leaving the fake watches on the hairy wrists they adorned.

The last body he examined was Bill's. He gave the dead bartender a pat on the cheek. "Look on the bright side," he said. "At least you finally got to leave Mexico."

And then he was standing up, spinning around, drawing a gun and aiming it at El. "If you're going to sit there and stare, the least you could do is politely applaud."

El said nothing. Sands was only aiming in his general direction. If he spoke, however, the round eye of that gun would find him unerringly.

"I know you're there," Sands said. "Now, do I start target practice, or are you going to say something?"

"You know I am here," El admitted, "but do you know if I am alone?" Using his words as cover, he used his boot to lift the lid of the guitar case.

For a second Sands almost seemed thrown by the question. Then he drew a second gun from his other shoulder holster. "All right. One for each of you. But somehow I don't think I'll need what's in gun number two. You always were a loner, El."

"How did you know I was here?" El asked.

"I saw you in the mirror," Sands said. He fired.

El had been expecting this.

There were two glasses on his table; one empty and one half-full of stale beer. As he let himself fall off the chair, he threw both glasses. The empty one he threw against the wall to his right. The one with the beer in it went straight for Sands' head.

His aim was dead on. The glass shattered as hit Sands in the temple, spraying beer, blood and broken glass in all directions. Sands' sunglasses were knocked askew, and he staggered back.

El hit the floor. He plunged both hands into his guitar case.

The second, empty beerglass hit the wall. Sands turned that way out of startled reflex. He fired twice before he could bring his treacherous hand under control.

By then El was on his feet again, a pistol in one hand and his favorite snub shotgun in the other.

Sands heard the jangle as he stood. The CIA officer spun around, firing as he went.

El dove for the bar. He stepped on one of the chairs that stood at his table, using it to launch himself forward. He hit the wood surface with his left hip and tumbled over it, to land in the inner part of the oval.

Silence fell in the room. El crouched down, trying to control his breathing. He could not see Sands, and Sands could not see him, but Sands had the advantage, because Sands' hearing was that much better.

He slid his left hand -- the one that held the pistol – up over the top of the bar and fired off a warning shot. "Do you know why I'm here?" he called. He was strangely excited, full of an energy he had not felt in a very long time.

"If you came for the karaoke, you missed out," Sands called. His voice came from El's left. "They moved that to Saturday nights."

"I came here for you!" El crowed. He felt ridiculously light-headed. Still crouched down, he duck-walked down the length of the bar, firing an occasional shot over the wooden counter. "Aren't you even going to ask me why?"

Shots plowed along the back wall of the bar. The mirror shattered. Bottles of booze splintered. Liquor rained down, mixed with a hail of silver shards of glass. The pungent smell of alcohol was so strong El nearly retched. He covered his head with both hands and waited for that deadly rain to dry up. 

When the shots finally stopped, he scrambled to his feet. Sands was standing on a long rectangular table halfway toward the double doors leading outside. He was grinning. "Is it because you missed my company?" He threw himself into a backwards roll off the table just as El fired, turning a neat somersault and landing on his feet.

Not for long, however. He dropped to the ground, using a chair as cover. He fired a single shot toward the bar, but it was close enough to force El to sink behind the bar again.

"What, no snappy comeback? You really need to work on that biting wit, El!" Sands called. Chairs shifted and a glass fell off a table as he made his way through the room.

Crouched down, not wanting to sit on the floor among the spilled liquor and broken glass, El dug into his pocket and pulled out new shells. He loaded the shotgun. "No more running," he said.

Gripping both guns tightly, he rose to his feet and strafed the room with gunfire. Sands dove from one table to the next, somehow always managing to stay one step ahead of the destruction El was creating.

And incredibly, he was laughing.

Inevitably, El's guns went empty. Still laughing, Sands popped up from behind a table that he had knocked over. He pulled the trigger on both guns. One bullet smashed into the front of the bar, and then only the sound of dry clicks filled the room.

For a moment they faced each other. Then El ran to his right. For his guitar case.

Sands began grasping anything and everything within reach and throwing it at El. As El flung open the cutout in the bar, a chair leg struck him in the head. He reeled to the right, his vision momentarily graying out. There was no pain.

"Come on!" Sands shouted. He held out both arms. Blood ran down his face from where the glass had struck him. It looked as though he was weeping tears of blood. But only from one eye. And he was still smiling.

He looked as though he was having the time of his life.

At the last second, El changed his mind about wanting the contents of his guitar case. He veered to the left and charged headlong into the center of the room.

Sands met him halfway. They collided in a fury. Without knowing how it happened, El found himself on the floor, one ear ringing and the side of his face flaming with pain. He stared blearily up at the ceiling for a moment, unable to remember where he was.

"Oh, shit," Sands groaned. "I think you just poked my eye out." He giggled. 

El sat up. Sands was kneeling beside a smashed table. He held his sunglasses in one hand. The damage caused by the glass El had thrown was clearly visible. Including the shard of glass he was pulling from his eyesocket.

Revolted, El grabbed hold of a chair and used it to haul himself to his feet. The high whining in his left ear would not stop. He reached up to touch it and was not surprised to see blood on his fingertips. He wondered what Sands had hit him with.

Sands dropped the bloody piece of glass and replaced his sunglasses. "Ding-ding. Round two?" He gave El a quick grin.

El was ready. He balled his right hand into a fist.

The room suddenly lit up as headlights splashed through the window. Outside, people began to shout. The police had arrived.

"Oh, is it time to go already?" Sands said. He shook his head. Already he was backing away, tripping and stumbling over the debris on the floor. He was heading for the hall that led to the bathrooms. "Why we've hardly had a chance to catch up."

"I will find you again," El vowed. He glanced behind him, to his guitar case.

"I'm sure you will," Sands said. "But until then..._arrivederci_." He fetched up against the wall. Immediately he turned and began following it, trailing his fingers along the surface, using it to find the hall. With his free hand he sketched a salute. "See you around."

He was gone.

El turned around and stalked back to his table. He slammed the lid of the guitar case closed and latched it. He picked it up, retrieved his guns, and then left the bar the same way Sands had.

******


	9. Blind Man's Bluff

Blind Man's Bluff

Disclaimer: I'm just a struggling writer. I don't own El and Sands. Please don't sue.

Rating: R for violence and language

Summary: El offers Sands a choice.

Author's Note: Cyberhugs to my beta reader, Melody. And to everyone who has written to me or reviewed, you guys are the best. I love you all. Your kind words keep me writing.

****

__

Fortunately for you, nothing you did is worth dying over. You have only seen things.

I'm his daughter.

We have to make sure that doesn't happen again.

Sands jerked awake with a cry. A weak, disgusting whimper escaped him before he could stop it. The sound was loud in the still room, making him flinch.

He sat up in bed, leaning against the headboard. Christ, it had been four years. But still he dreamed about it.

He supposed he was entitled to the dream. After all, that day had irrevocably changed his life. There was not going to be any do-over for him, or any rewinding. No Control-Alt-Delete to reboot. He was going to be blind for the rest of his life, however long or short that might be.

Still, it pissed him off to keep dreaming about it.

When his racing heart had slowed back to its normal rhythm, he got out of bed and walked into the bathroom. He had been staying in this particular hotel for a week now, and it was time to move on. This would be his last day here.

He turned on the shower. He stripped down, folding his clothes carefully and laying them on the counter beside the sink. Before losing his eyes – in what he thought of as his former life -- he had never been one to treat his clothes carelessly, or let them drop to the floor and wrinkle, but now he was more particular than ever. It was a pain in the ass to stand there feeling for a sleeve or zipper. Better to take the time to fold things and know where everything was, than to stand there fumbling around like an idiot.

Naked, he stood in front of the tub, holding his hand under the flow of water, testing the temperature.

The shoot-out with El had been a month ago.

And El was in town.

He couldn't be one hundred percent sure, of course. But he had heard the rumors, and yesterday, leaving the hotel, he had heard the jingle of chains. Only El Mariachi would continue to wear such a ludicrous outfit when he was supposed to be on the hunt.

The water was as hot as it was going to get. Sands stepped under the spray and yanked the flimsy curtain closed.

He would check out from the hotel this morning and hitch a ride somewhere. He was thinking of Mexico City. Someplace big enough to get lost in. He was never going to be anonymous, but in a big city like that he could stay hidden for a decent amount of time. And he didn't think cities were El's milieu; the mariachi would prefer small dusty towns. Mexico City wouldn't stop El from hunting him down, but it might slow El enough to give him some breathing room.

He was sick and tired of running. In his former life he had always been a man of action, restless and full of energy. He had hated to stay in one place for too long, and start to feel settled. He had liked the challenge of the unfamiliar. He had liked to move about, both physically and psychically. It had seemed important not to be caught standing still.

But there came a time when a man could not run anymore. And Sands was fast reaching that point. He was almost ready to just sit down in the dust and let El find him.

Almost. Not quite, though.

The hot water pounded on his shoulders, loosening the knots of tension that were always there. He could never relax now, never breathe deep. His sleep was light and uneven; the faintest noise woke him and sent him scrambling for his guns. He could never let down his guard, because he was never for a moment allowed to forget that he was eternally in the dark.

He wondered if El was pissed about what had happened in the bar. What El didn't know was that Bill had indeed made a second phone call. Sands wasn't supposed to have known about that call, though. But in fact he had heard every word of it, while standing outside the backroom where Bill had been known to do business in human goods, especially little girls.

__

I already called some of your buddies, but he's good. He'll probably take them down. But you come, a little bit later, and you can take him by surprise. He won't be expecting that. It's the best chance you'll ever get.

He should have killed the douchebag a long time ago, he thought. And normally he would have, but he had grown lazy. It had been easier to keep working with Bill than to establish a brand-new business relationship with someone else. And Bill, like everyone else in the world, had looked at him and seen only a blind man. Bill had underestimated him.

So now Bill was dead.

He was just reaching for the shampoo when he heard the sound. He froze, one hand still outstretched.

Someone was in his room.

"Shit," he swore. The nearest gun was in the drawer of the nightstand. Another was under his pillow. The other two were under the bed itself. He was utterly defenseless now, naked and dripping wet. Even his sunglasses were gone, sitting innocently on top of the clothes piled on the counter.

Panic swooped over his head, wanting to settle on his shoulders. He took an involuntary step backward, trying to blend in with the tile.

The bathroom door was flung open. Sands braced himself for the searing impact of bullets.

Instead the shower curtain was ripped off the rings. Hands grabbed him and he found himself thrown out of the shower and onto the floor. His head connected with the toilet, and sparks of light danced in front of him, the only light he ever saw anymore.

The blow left him dazed. He could not move as the hands took hold of him again. This time he was tossed out into the bedroom. He landed hard, smacking his chin on the floor and tasting blood. Before he could get to his feet, someone kicked him in the ribs, sending him rolling across the carpet. 

He fetched up against the bed. He was grabbed again, and thrown against the wall. He fell to the floor, part of his brain still trying frantically to understand what had happened to his nice hot shower.

Heavy footsteps crossed the room. They did not jingle.

A large hand wrapped itself in his wet hair and pulled, forcing him up on his knees. "Where is El Mariachi?" asked a deep voice. "He has not found you yet?"

"What?" Sands asked. 

The hand let go of his hair. An instant later he was picked up and thrown again.

He crashed into the nightstand beside the bed and crumpled to the floor. The lamp shattered. The clock radio began to play a tinny song. The phone handset flew off the hook, and the dial tone sounded loud in his ear. Every inch of him hurt, and he moaned.

"I have not come all this way for nothing," said the deep voice. It did not belong to the owner of the heavy footsteps, Sands realized. There were two men in the room. The speaker, and the big brute currently playing Frisbee with his body.

The brute had to walk around the bed to get to him. On his hands and knees, Sands began to crawl toward the bed, reaching desperately for the guns he had placed under it last night before falling asleep.

"Two for the price of one," said the deep voice. It spoke in perfectly understandable Spanish, but it had an accent Sands could not place. "El Mariachi is following you. We know he is here, in town. I can wait for him to find you, and then I will take him. Or, you can tell me where he is and save yourself much pain."

A boot stomped on his hand. He cried out, unable to help it. 

Something thin and plastic wrapped itself around his throat. It felt like the phone cord. He clawed at his neck, scrambling to get his fingers under the cord. The brute pulled hard, yanking his head back.

__

Can't breathe can't breathe! There was no fighting off the panic this time. Sands fought and struggled, but he could not loosen the cord. Dull roaring filled his ears, and his hands dropped to his sides.

Just before he passed out, the brute relaxed the cord. He slumped, coughing and gasping for air.

"El Mariachi," said the deep voice. "Tell me where to find him."

"Fuck you," Sands groaned.

The cord pulled itself tight again, cutting off his air. He threw himself backward, but the brute was there, preventing him from going anywhere. He flailed out with a loose fist, trying to sock the guy in the crotch, but there was no strength behind the blow, and the brute sidestepped it easily.

Unconsciousness was near when the cord loosened again. He sagged forward and would have fallen, but the brute gripped his shoulder with one large hand.

"This is your last chance," said the deep voice.

Every breath burned in his throat. Sands blessed each one.

"Very well," said the deep voice.

The cord tightened, strangling him, cutting into his throat. He could not fight anymore, he had no strength he couldn't breathe he was going to die after all this time he was going to die.

And then his fading brain heard a sound. Silenced gunshots. The sweetest sound there was.

The brute fell. He let go of the phone cord, and it went slack.

Sands collapsed.

He lay facedown where he fell, unable to move. His entire body throbbed with pain. It hurt to breathe, but he could not stop gasping, desperate for more. Air had never tasted so good.

Footsteps crossed the room. Chains jangled. Sands groaned.

It really was perfect, he thought miserably. Here he was, half-dead thanks to some nameless goon. He was sans sunglasses, wet hair clinging to his cheek and the phone cord still wrapped loosely about his neck. _What a picture this must make._

"I told you I would find you again," El said.

"Congratulations," he started to say. But his voice had apparently decided to take a vacation. All that came out was a hoarse croak. Pain convulsed his throat, and he groaned again.

"Aren't you going to thank me?" El asked.

Sands held up his middle finger.

El chuckled. There was no humor in that laugh. "Do you want to stand up? There, you see? I give you the chance to die on your feet."

__

No, El, I don't see. I don't see a fucking thing anymore, thanks very much.

In response, he held up the same finger. His left hand hurt where the brute had stomped on it. He wondered if anything was broken.

"Why did they want to know where I was?" El asked.

So El had missed the first part of the conversation. That was great. The mariachi probably thought he had been all heroic with his silence, protecting El. When in truth he had simply been too dazed by it all to have an answer. The last thing he had ever expected was intelligent cartel. The mere idea of them waiting to grab both their enemies at once would have been laughable before today.

Yet it had happened. They had tried to use him to get to El, and they had nearly succeeded.

Shit. He owed his life to El. Well, that was just fucking great.

"Answer me." El put a bullet into the floor near his cheek. Sands jumped, and broke into a fit of coughing. 

The coughs tore at his chest. Yep, he had definitely busted something on one of his meetings with the wall. He started to curl onto his side, and then froze.

Oh, this just got better and better. He was still buck naked.

When the coughing had subsided, he reached out with his right hand, seeking the bed. His fingers brushed something soft, and he seized it and pulled. It was the sheet, not the bedspread, but it would do.

El laughed again as he wrapped the sheet around himself and slowly sat up. He slapped the phone cord away and winced as it hit the floor with a cold smack. He thought about standing up, then decided that was a bad idea. Better stay on the floor, he thought. Less chance of disgracing himself by fainting, or anything like that.

"I expected more from you," El said. "Letting yourself be caught like this." He made a tsk-tsk noise, and Sands could just imagine him waggling a finger in scolding. "It's very sloppy."

Sands said nothing. It hurt to swallow. His throat was already swelling. In another few minutes he would be fighting for air again.

"Or maybe you wanted to be caught," El said. "Is that it?"

__

Shoot me or shut the fuck up, El. He began to feel among the wreckage that had come from the nightstand. His seeking fingers found the phone, now gone silent. The clock radio, still playing shitty music.

"What are you doing?" El demanded. He sounded tense, only a moment away from pulling the trigger.

Sands shot him the finger for the third time. He couldn't believe El thought he was looking for a gun. _Yeah, El. You keep your guns in a guitar case. I keep mine in my handy-dandy clock radio. Fuck off, why don't you?_

At last he found what he was looking for. The stub of pencil and the little pad of paper that had been left on the nightstand like an afterthought. No embossed Holiday Inn stationery here. The pad was the size of a wallet.

He wrote carefully, aware that his handwriting had deteriorated badly since losing his sight. No longer able to see the page, he found the lines he wrote invariably curved downward, and the margins of the paper came upon him without warning. Still, this message was easy enough.

"Fuck off."

El uttered that unamused laugh again. "And miss all this fun?"

"What do you want?" he wrote. He was pissed off that he couldn't talk. His throat had closed down to a pinhole. Every breath hurt, from his sprung ribs to the fire in his throat.

All that running and hiding, and it had all come down to this. This pathetic, wasted end. Sitting naked and wet on the floor of a hotel room in a town he didn't even know the name of. What a joke. If he had had a gun at that moment he wouldn't have even bothered shooting El. He would have shot himself, out of pure disgust.

El had to come closer to read the words this time, and Sands stiffened involuntarily. He didn't want the mariachi coming any closer thank you very much.

"You know what I want," El said.

He did know. El wanted to kill him. He couldn't understand why El hadn't already done it.

"Why did they want to know about me?" El asked again. "Why did they ask you?"

Sands gave an elaborate, "beats me" shrug. He scooted backward, making sure the sheet stayed over his lap, until he felt the wall at his back. Now that the adrenaline of the attack was wearing off, he could feel the various aches and pains of his body. He was going to be bruised all over, he thought glumly.

El Mariachi sat on the bed across from him. This was a little too close for his liking, but on the plus side, it meant his death would be clean. Even El couldn't miss such a point-blank shot. "Do you know who these men were?"

He shook his head, then wished he hadn't. He winced, and touched his fingers to his throat.

Damn. It was worse than he had thought. The flesh there was hot and swollen, except for a deep groove where the cord had been. He was bleeding too, although not badly. He dropped his hand back to his lap. He wondered if he looked as terrible as he felt.

On the heels of that thought, he suddenly wondered if El was sparing his life out of pity.

He picked up the pencil and scribbled. "Why don't you just kill me and get it over with?"

The bedsprings squeaked as El stood up. Chains jangled. And then the muzzle of a gun was pressed to his forehead. "If that's what you want," El said.

Sands reacted instinctively. He reached up and batted the gun away. The roar as it went off deafened him, but the bullet buried itself in the wall, not in his skull.

"I guess you do still wish to live," El remarked calmly. He sat on the bed again.

Puzzled, Sands stayed where he was. El had pulled the trigger only after he had slapped the gun away from his head. He didn't get what the mariachi was playing at. Either El wanted to kill him, or El didn't. There wasn't much gray area in the middle there, yet that was where El seemed to be coming from these days. It didn't make any sense.

He ripped the top page off the notepad and turned it over. He wrote, "What is going on here?"

"You tell me," El invited.

Sands flipped him off.

"All right," El said. "Do you know who those men were?"

That was the second time El had asked. Again, he shook his head. 

"They were Colombian," El said. "I have seen this man's face before. In the newspaper." When he spoke next, it was with a cold smile. "You see, you cannot accuse me of not keeping up with current events any more."

__

Good for you, fucker. Wanna explain why two Colombians are dead in my hotel room?

"This man is head of security for a large Colombian cartel. One that has connections to several cartels here in Mexico." El did not sound like he was smiling anymore. "You have been noticed, my friend. By men in high places."

Sands was too startled to react at first. He had hoped he was doing some serious damage to the cartels, but here was the proof. He had brought them to the brink of ruin, and the bigwigs in Colombia – where the real money lay – were not happy about that. So someone had taken out a contract on him, having decided that the Mexicans were not up to the task.

Then he frowned. Had El just called him, "my friend?" 

"You don't seem very pleased by this. I would have thought this news would make you happy."

__

Sure. I'm real happy, fuckmook. Men with enough money and resources to find me even if I run to fucking Afghanistan want me dead. Yeah, play that funky music white boy, because I'm ready to start dancing in the streets.

Shit. He was in serious trouble here. He would be dead right now if it wasn't for El Mariachi.

"I had not realized," El said, "how badly you had hurt them." 

The mariachi sounded genuinely respectful. Again, Sands frowned. He was not used to men talking to him that way. In his experience they were either craven cowards doing whatever he wanted so he wouldn't kill them, or they were threatening him.

"Perhaps I have been wrong about you," El said. "I had thought it was a mistake to let you live. I thought you would only continue to try to hurt my country and its people, the way you did with the coup. Instead, I find you helping them, more even than their own government does."

__

Bet you're wishing El Presidente had died after all, hey, El?

"So I make you an offer. One time only. Will you listen?"

Unable to spit the insults he wanted, he resorted to flipping El the bird again. Of course he was going to listen. He was blind and couldn't talk. What else could he do except sit here and listen?

"Good. Now, you still wish to bring them all down? What happened today has not made you think twice about your chosen path?"

God, who wrote El's lines, he wondered. Sometimes he could almost forget El was a mariachi, and then the man said something like that. Only a man who was still a poet at heart would blather on about chosen paths.

In a strange way he barely understood, it was comforting. Maybe El wasn't just a cold killer. Maybe there was more to the man than guns in guitar cases. And that other side of the man, the poet, was the one who had spoken to him with respect. The poet was the one who had forbidden Lorenzo from killing him a year ago. The poet was the one making the offer now, giving him a chance to keep defying the odds and survive.

He wrote, "What do you want?"

"I want you to destroy them," El said. "All of them."

He couldn't help it. He scrawled, "So leave me alone."

"You need help," El said.

Infuriated, Sands crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it at El.

"I have no intention of joining you," El said. "I have taken my revenge. I have no desire to spill more blood."

__

Sure you don't. Just my blood. When it's convenient for you.

"But today proves that you can no longer take your vengeance on your own. You need help."

Sands wished El would stop saying it like that. He had always hated that phrase. Usually someone said it to him with a look of mixed disgust and pity, and almost always in reference to his mental state.

"So this is my offer. You continue your crusade against the cartels. And I will protect you."

This so surprised him that he actually managed to produce a laugh. Which turned out to be a bad idea. Pain sank its claws into his throat, and he doubled over, gasping for breath.

El said nothing during all this. When he was able to sit up again, he wrote quickly on the notepad. "What makes you think I won't kill you?"

"You might," El said. "But I am prepared to take that chance."

__

So I'm not the only one with a deathwish, right, El? Somehow that doesn't surprise me.

He shook his head. No deal.

"Think carefully before you decide," El said. Metal snicked, and he knew El was toying with the gun that was still aimed at his head.

The last of his humor died away. El was giving him a choice, he realized. He could accept El's offer and go on about his business, with the mariachi always lurking in the background as a shadowy protector. Or he could say no, and El would just shoot him right here and now.

It wasn't much of a choice. He did hate his life and what he had become, but that life was not to be thrown away. It was all he had. He wasn't ready to give it up just yet.

So he would say yes. What else could he do? He would accept the deal, and as a reward he would get to live. Always with El watching him, but, as El had proven today, sometimes that could turn out to be a good thing.

With El at his back, he could do more. Take more risks. He needed a pair of eyes. He would let El do the legwork for him, and then he would do the killing. Maybe El was on his guard now, but the poet inside wanted to talk to someone. Sooner or later El would relax, and let him in. And the moment that happened, Sands would be there, taking advantage of the opportunity. He had never missed yet on a chance to use someone for his own benefit. He would not miss now.

The big question was, what was El getting out of this arrangement? Sands didn't believe for a second that El was so concerned about the people of Mexico. No, El wanted this for purely selfish reasons. The problem was, he couldn't figure out what those reasons were. El was perfectly capable of killing, so there was no question of him wanting to live vicariously. And he didn't strike Sands as the morbid type who enjoyed death, so it wasn't that El wanted to watch him in action. So what was it?

His curiosity was too much. He wrote, "What's in it for you?" and held up the notepad.

El made an enigmatic sound. Chains jingled, and the bedsprings squeaked as he stood up. "Make your choice. Yes or no?

Sands pursed his lips. He supposed he ought to have known El would not answer him. 

He held out his hand and nodded.

"That is not good enough," El said. "I want to hear you say it."

Sands made an angry gesture at his throat.

"Then write it," El said implacably.

__

Oh you fucker, you're going down. One day. You'll start to trust me, and then we'll see. Then you'll regret this moment. You'll wish you'd never even heard of me.

He flipped over the page so he had a fresh piece of paper. He wrote, "Yes," in big block letters. He ripped the page free and held it out.

El took it. He heard paper being folded and then stuffed into a pocket. "Good," El said. "Now, there is cartel all over this town. We are leaving."

Sands gritted his teeth. If he had been capable of speaking, he would retorted that he had already planned to do just that.

"Get up," El said. "We're leaving."

With a sinking heart, Sands realized that he had no choice. He could refuse, but then El would shoot him.

Defiance would have to wait. For now, he was at El's mercy. That was all right. He was the one who had defined creative sportsmanship. He knew how to play, and he knew how and when to change the rules. He would play El's little game, and when El least expected it, he was going to blow El's fucking head off.

He stood up, clutching the sheet about his waist with one hand. He hurt all over. Inside the bathroom, the shower was still running. Ridiculously, he longed to step under the spray again and wash the tension out of his body.

It was too bad water couldn't wash away hatred, too.

******


	10. To Know Thy Enemy

To Know Thy Enemy

Disclaimer: Still with the not-owning them.

Rating: PG-13 for mild violence

Summary: Meet the oddest Odd Couple that has ever been

Author's Note: As most of you are mentioning in your reviews, this fic is an attempt to turn the normal OUATIM dynamic on its head. Rather than having El be the one to bring the light back to Sands, I wanted to try and switch their roles. What happens if El is the one to fall into the darkness? Can Sands bring him back? Can El even be saved at all? This story is going into scary dark places, and I have no idea how it will all turn out. I'm sure the end will surprise all of us, though.

****

Within an hour, Sands knew he had made a very bad decision.

El had nixed the idea of going to Mexico City. He would not say where they were going, however. The only thing Sands had been able to determine, judging by the angle of the sun, was that they were heading east.

He sat in the passenger seat of El's car, aching all over and silently fuming. It would be at least a day before he could speak, and until then he was essentially helpless. He could not make his demands known, for he only had four pieces of paper left in the notepad from the hotel, and he knew damn well El would not get him another one. He had to ration the paper, and only use it for important announcements.

He counted himself lucky that El had allowed him to keep his guns. Strangely enough, the mariachi had not seemed interested at all as he had dressed and armed himself. For all he knew El had stood in the corner and stared avidly, but he was almost certain that El had turned his back and given him some privacy.

That was just one more thing about El that did not make sense. The mariachi could be hard and bitter, but then he could show a surprising flash of humanity, like turning his back so Sands could get dressed. It was just enough to keep Sands confused, and he didn't like that. He liked things to be black and white. No gray areas. It was too easy to get lost in the mist and fog of gray.

So now here they were. El had a convertible, of all things. The wind whipped his hair wildly about his head, so that he had been forced to tie it back. He had no idea where they were going, he could barely breathe, and his chauffeur was a mariachi with a deathwish.

Well, he had had worse days.

****

The hotel they checked into was a joke. The room's bouquet was a gagging combination of piss, vomit, and unwashed bodies, and he could hear roaches scuttling along the baseboards. Sands stood just inside the door and vowed he would not even sit on the bed. There was no way in hell he was going to relax his guard one iota, not with those fuckers running around and two inviting holes in his face.

El set the guitar case on the floor. "Midnight," he said. "Or sometime after. Men will come to rob me. If they are cartel, then we will know we were followed."

Sands frowned. El had begun by using the singular, but he had ended by saying "we." Freudian slip, or deliberate? He made a circular motion with his hand, a "yeah, and?" gesture.

"And if they are not cartel, they will be no less dead," El said.

Sands gave him a cold smile. On some things at least, he and El Mariachi saw eye to eye.

"They were in the lobby," El said. "Watching me check in." Sands had been waiting outside in the car, so the hotel staff would only think one person would be using the room. "They will be here later tonight."

All right, all right. He had already heard that part. He tuned out the rest of El's words, instead listening hard to the room itself. Objects gave off echoes, he had learned. He could sense where furniture lurked, chair legs that wanted to trip him up and table corners that wanted to gouge chunks of flesh from his hips. Rooms were minefields to the blind, and only the strong could maneuver through them and come through unscathed.

El walked away. Sands counted the number of steps El took. Eight. Then the tenor of the footsteps changed, as El's feet left the carpet and found the tile of the bathroom. A click of a light switch. A door was shut.

Fuck. He was alone. Well, he would be damned if he stood here all night like an idiot. Carrying the bag that contained his few possessions, he followed El's path. He kept his left hand held out, half-wincing with the anticipation of contact – he didn't think his fingers were broken from where the brute had stepped on his hand, but they hurt like a bastard. 

Two steps into the room he sensed something on the left. He bent his knees and leaned to the left, his fingers brushing the air. They encountered something soft and scratchy. A bedspread.

He straightened up and drifted to the left. He walked forward again, sliding his left leg along the bed, using it for reference. Another two steps took him to the end of the bed. Open space loomed ahead, full of any number of nasty traps just waiting gleefully for him. A snag in the carpet, a low dresser eager to slam into his knee.

He kept walking. Three steps later his reaching fingertips encountered the wall. Slide to the right. One more step and he was in front of the bathroom door. The water was running.

He turned around and walked back the way he had come. But he already knew what he was going to find.

There was only one bed.

Well, fuck it. It wasn't like he had planned to sleep, anyway.

The bathroom door opened and El came out. The smell of soap wafted out into the room, fought a brief but losing battle against the reek of the former occupants, and expired.

El walked forward, right toward him. Instinctively Sands recoiled, one hand dropping to the gun at his hip.

El kept on walking, brushing past him. Something rustled, and something else thumped. Two clicks and then an unidentifiable sound.

A twang of a guitar string.

And then he knew. El had opened the guitar case. And the guitar inside.

He wondered what secrets were hidden inside that guitar. He knew he would never find out. If El caught him touching it, he would be lucky to come away with a broken neck.

El began arming himself. These sounds Sands was familiar with. He listened, growing steadily more pissed. El had obviously decided to ignore him, which was fine with him, except that he had no idea where he was, or what the room looked like. He had not found a chair or anywhere to sit, or anything except the bed with its scratchy, stinky bedspread.

Fine. So these, then were the rules. No talking. No acknowledging the other person's presence. He could live with those rules.

But rules were made to be broken. And Sands had no intention of following them any longer than he needed to. Carefully he turned around. He took five steps and turned right. His feet hit the tile and he closed the door behind him.

The doorknob was battered and dented. But the lock worked. Sands turned it with a vicious twist of his wrist, and went to sit on the edge of the tub.

****

Sometime later, a knock sounded on the door. He had heard the jangling sounds of El's approach, so he was not surprised.

"Sands."

__

Go piss out the window. You're not coming in here.

"They're here."

Oh, yeah. The thieves.

He stood up and drew his guns. He opened the door.

"Three--" El started to say. And then the door leading outside was kicked open. Three men entered in a flurry of guns and footsteps.

Sands reacted without thinking. His hands had hold of his guns and were firing before his brain could impose conscious will on them.

By then it was too late anyway. Three bodies hit the floor in separate meaty thuds. He smelled gunpowder in an acrid overlay to the stink of the room.

"-- of them," El finished. "Hmm." He made a noncommittal noise that made Sands feel stupidly like laughing. If he hadn't been fighting for every breath through the swelled pipe of his throat, he might even have indulged that need.

"Now we will never know who they represented," El said.

This was one of the stupidest things Sands had ever heard. If those men were cartel it would be obvious. Their clothing, their jewelry, their weapons, all these things and more would give them away. And if El could not see those things with his eyes, then suddenly it became debatable who was the blind one in the room.

With a sigh of disgust, he pushed past El, holstering his guns as he went.

"You only missed once," El offered. "If you want to know."

Sands did not even turn around. He held up his middle finger over his shoulder and kept right on walking.

Two steps away from the bodies and the open door, sudden sound warned him. One of the men was still alive.

El heard it too. From behind him the mariachi drew a gun, but Sands was closer, and he was faster. One shot, and the man was dead.

"You are very fast," El said.

__

No shit, he wanted to say. He knelt beside the nearest body and began rifling its pockets.

He knew right away the men were not cartel. Their hands were rough, and their clothes were polyester. Not the sort of men who made their dough selling drugs to American kids.

That didn't stop him from taking their money. He shoved the bills in his pockets and turned around to face El.

The mariachi said, "We are leaving."

Sands nodded. And then, because he couldn't resist, he pulled out the notepad and scribbled, "You should get your money back."

To his surprise, El chuckled. And it sounded real enough. "You think so?"

Sands grinned. He sure as hell wouldn't pay for a full night in this shithole. 

Chains jingled as El crossed the room. "Forget it." He did not sound amused now. "Get your things."

Sands shrugged. Whatever.

**** 

Once again El did not tell him their destination. And without the sun to guide him, he had no idea what direction they were traveling in.

He thought El would stop again and try their luck at a different motel. But El did not stop. The man was a machine, Sands had to admit. Despite El's lack of sleep, the car did not waver in its straight path.

Wait, thinking about sleep was no good. He had to stifle a yawn, and that hurt. A lot.

They drove through the night. The top was up, but Sands rolled his window halfway down so he could get some air. He was uncomfortable sitting so close next to El Mariachi for so long. Over the years he had gotten plenty of rides from strangers, and he had encountered more than his share of psychos, but this was different. This was someone he knew, someone from his past. Under any other set of circumstances, he might even have been expected to make conversation.

Not that they had anything to talk about. He had long ago realized that he and El were more alike than either of them wanted to admit, but that did not make them friends. They were not even allies, despite the deal they had struck. He didn't know what to call their twisted relationship, actually. It seemed to defy regular words.

He wondered what exactly El thought was going to happen. In the past he had carefully arranged things to work in his favor. He had never gone into a gunfight without plenty of advance preparation. That was not going to change. The only thing he could see changing was that he would have to be twice as vigilant, now that he had El at his back. He did not trust El, not one bit.

The road unwound before them. Hours passed. The air coming through the window grew cooler and then bottomed out. El stopped to get gas. They stopped again for burgers and fries, which they ate in the car. Sands was hungry, but it hurt to eat, and he had to choke the food down. Yet he made himself eat it all. With El in the driver's seat, there was no telling when the next pit stop would be.

He leaned his head back on the seat and played a game with himself called Which One? As in, which body part did he wish Barillo had taken instead of his eyes? What could he afford to give up and still function?

The list was surprisingly long. Or maybe he just had a different perspective on things, now that he had experienced permanent loss of a part of himself. Fingers and toes were expendable. A foot was no big loss, a hand was bad. Ears were no problem, same with a nose. A tongue was an issue. He had thought long and hard before deciding that he would give up his balls but not his dick. After all, it wasn't like he was getting laid a lot these days, and he had never had any interest in having kids, so sperm wasn't necessary. His dick now…no question there.

He was pondering the consequences of losing a kidney when El surprised him by saying, "Why didn't you go back to America?"

He turned to El and emphatically flipped him off, making sure his finger pointed to his damaged throat. _You want to talk now? Great sense of timing you've got there, El. I bet you're a premature ejaculator, too._

"I think it is because you could not go back. You burned your bridges with the coup, didn't you?" El said casually.

Sands fought the urge to punch El in the mouth. El was driving, and they were going fast. It would not be good to make them get in a wreck.

"I think your superiors didn't like you," El said. "That is why they sent you to my country. You are a spy. And you are good at what you do. Why wouldn't they send you to a country where there is a need for men like you?" The mariachi sounded thoughtful, as though he was driving alone in his car and thinking out loud. "They are scared of you, is what I think."

__

You don't know the half of it, El. But here's something else you don't know. Fuck with the United States and you had better have one hell of a retirement plan. Because those guys don't forgive, and they don't forget.

"So they sent you to Mexico so you would not embarrass them in a country where they needed men of silence. And still you embarrassed them, through your involvement with the coup. So they left you down here, blind and without money or means to make a living."

Sands clenched his jaw so hard his entire face hurt. If El said one more word, he really was going to deck him.

"Your Central Intelligence Agency is not very intelligent," El said.

Sands froze, his fist already in the act of leaving his lap. _What the fuck?_

"They obviously underestimated you," El said.

Slightly mollified by this, Sands let his hand drop back to his lap and unclenched his fist.

"I won't make that same mistake," El said. Until then he had been speaking lightly. That casual tone obviously feigned but he had still been doing a good job of pretending not to care. Now however, he sounded cold and every bit a killer.

Sands pulled out the notepad and tore off a piece of paper. In big letters he wrote, "Good idea." He reached across the seat and slapped the paper into El's face.

The car swerved to the left as El reflexively recoiled, jerking the steering wheel to one side. Paper rattled as he swiped it off his face and crumpled it in one fist.

When the blow came, Sands was ready. He heard the rustle of fabric and the displacement of air. He caught El's fist and slammed the mariachi's arm downward. El's wrist struck the gearshift, and this time the car gave a great lurch across the road.

"Good idea," Sands said, in a husky voice that barely resembled his own, "but you already blew it." He let go of El's fist. Whatever happened next, he had won. If El hit him, he would just laugh, confident in the knowledge that he knew how to push the mariachi's buttons. And if El let him be, he would still laugh, knowing he had just proven his point.

El straightened out the car. For a moment he did not respond, and Sands wondered how close El's hand was to his gun right now. Then finally the mariachi said, "If you do anything like that again I will kill you."

It hurt like hell, but Sands just threw back his head and laughed.

****

When the sun came up, he figured out that they were going north. They stopped for gas, and for breakfast. Once again they ate in the car. Burritos this time. El crumpled up the paper wrappers and threw them out the window, then uttered a ringing belch. In the front seat, Sands laughed. He couldn't help it. He had always had a weakness for bathroom humor.

He hoped they were nearing the endpoint of their journey. He could swear the upholstery of the seat cushion was tattooed on his ass by now. The various aches and pains he was sporting after yesterday's Frisbee game were now quite loud and angry, insisting that he do something about them. Tops on the wishlist was a bottle of tequila, but at this point he would settle for a long hot bath.

They had been silent for several hours, but now El spoke up again. "If someone held a gun to your head and said they would kill you unless you begged for your life, would you do it?"

Christ, where did El come up with these things? He looked over at the mariachi and arched an eyebrow. _Would you?_

"I would not," El said. "I would not dishonor myself in that way."

Somehow Sands had expected this. "I would," he said. His voice was a hoarse croak, but at least it was cooperating.

"Why?" El asked. He sounded surprised.

He swallowed hard. When he was a kid he had had strep throat so bad they had taken out his tonsils, but that pain was like stubbing his toe compared to the hurt he felt now. "Because then I would live."

"With the loss of your self-respect," El said.

"No." He shook his head. "Not a loss. A victory. I would live, and I would hunt that person down. I would shoot out his kneecaps and I would make _him_ beg. And when he did, I would shoot him in the head." 

God, his throat felt sandblasted. His voice faded in and out. "Creative sportsmanship, El. Don't play by their rules. That's the secret to winning the game."

"Is that how you see life? As a game?" El asked. The mariachi actually seemed to be enjoying their conversation. Sands suddenly found himself wondering when was the last time El had held a conversation with anyone that had consisted of anything more than, "Yes, I want fries with that."

"Yes and no," he said. "Games imply the existence of rules. I don't believe in rules." More to the point, he didn't believe in rules in association with himself. Rules existed to keep everyone else in check. They did not affect him.

"But I do believe in winning. Rig the game. Cheat. Lie. Steal. Kill. Do whatever it takes." He turned to face El, so the mariachi could see the blank sunglasses that had replaced his eyes. "Stay alive."

El said nothing to this. Sands said, "What is going on here? You haven't been chasing me for a year just so you can be my bodyguard."

"I was going to kill you," El allowed. He did not sound particularly enthusiastic about that, Sands noted. Which meant nothing, but it still made him frown. He didn't know if it was the poet or the killer who had made that comment.

"But not anymore?" he asked.

"Not yet," El said.

"Why?" he asked.

"I have my reasons," El said.

Sands scowled. He had used that same bullshit answer on El a year ago, when they had first met again in the hotel courtyard. El had asked him why he was still in Mexico.

"If you think I'm going to be your puppet," he warned.

"I know you will not be," El said mildly. "But I also know that you will do what I tell you."

"Really?" His voice cracked and disappeared halfway through the word, but he knew El had understood him anyway.

"Because if you do not," El said, "I will kill you. And you wish to live too much to allow that."

"Maybe I'm getting tired of living," Sands said.

"You have a gun," El said. "If that is true, no one is stopping you."

Despite himself, his upper lip curled in scorn. Suicide had never been an option, even during those blacker-than-black days after the coup when he had first begun to realize what it meant to be blind.

"We will go where I say," El said. "And you will do as I say."

"I'm not your fucking slave," Sands snarled. The hoarseness of his voice actually made him sound more threatening, but he knew that didn't matter. El seemed to respect him, but only to a certain point.

El, he suddenly realized, was using him. The same way he himself had used everyone for his entire life. Others had tried before, wanting to manipulate him the way he manipulated them, but no one had succeeded. He had always seen it coming a mile ahead, and twisted things around so the plan backfired, so the person who had meant to trap him found themselves caught in their own snare.

Not this time. He had walked right into the trap this time, and the hell of it was, he had done it with his eyes open. Figuratively speaking, of course. He had known good and well what El meant when the offer was made, and he had still accepted.

__

If someone held a gun to your head and said they would kill you unless you begged for you life, would you do it?

Well, there was a gun aimed at his head now, all right. And like he had told El, he would do what was necessary to survive. So he would play El's game. He would let El use him, and in return he would take what protection El offered.

And he would lay his own plans. Because life really was a game. El was winning for now, but no winning streak lasted forever. One day El would roll the dice and they would come up snake eyes.

And on that day, El would look up and see two eyes staring down at him, black bullet eyes. They would be the last things he ever saw.

Sands meant to make sure of it.

*****


	11. Turning Point

Turning Point

Disclaimer: El and Sands are the property of Troublemaker Studios' resident genius, Robert Rodriguez.

Rating: R for violence and swearing. Please note that this is not a nice chapter. El is not a nice man.

Summary: As he sinks further and further into darkness, El Mariachi makes a desperate attempt to resist what is happening to him.

Author's Note: This chapter makes a quick reference to one of the deleted scenes on the DVD. It also contains a scene with some very dark moments. Please be warned. I have mixed feelings for El in this chapter. On the one hand I hate him. But I also feel very very sorry for him.

Also, a note on updating. I have been building a house, and after a year of struggles, it is finally completed. I will be moving in this weekend. Hooray! Anyway, this means things are going to be very chaotic and busy for me over the next couple weeks. I will do my best to continue to update this story in a timely manner, but there may be a few times when several days passes between new chapters. Please bear with me, and I'll try to get back on a regular updating schedule as soon as I can. Thanks, everyone.

Lastly, thanks and hugs to Melody my beta reader and dear friend. I love you, girl.

****

El wasted no time putting his plan into motion. 

They stopped in the first decent-sized town they came to, and got a hotel room. He locked the door, stuck a chair under the knob for good measure, and set his guitar case down beside the bed. Deliberately ignoring his sulky companion, El stretched out fully clothed on top of the bedspread and fell asleep.

When he woke it was almost eight o'clock. Sands was sitting on the windowsill, smoking.

El went to his guitar case and opened it. He strapped his wrist holsters on, slid their accompanying guns into his sleeves, put his jacket back on, and announced that he was going to the bar down the street.

Sands said he would go too. El told him to stay in the room. Sands hopped down from the windowsill and said he was coming. So El walked over and laid him out with one solid punch.

From on the floor, Sands glared up at him. Fucker, he said.

It's too soon, El said. We just got here. I'll go down into the bar, and spread the word that the blind gunfighter is in town. Tomorrow morning you can go into the city center and let everyone see you buying ammunition at one of the gun shops. The news will get out that you're here, and soon new men will arrive in town. Cartel men.

Sands stood up and said that was fine, but if you ever hit me again, you're going to get a bullet between the eyes.

El smiled, knowing Sands would hear the smile in his voice. I don't think so, he said, and walked out.

****

It was a good plan. It worked beautifully. Within three days cartel came sniffing, like dogs drawn to the scent of a bitch in heat. Sands arranged to be "caught" behind the bar, and a short but vicious gunfight ensued. The members of the cartel were killed. Sands walked away unharmed, and El stood in the shadows and watched it all.

The plan worked in the next town, too. And in the one that came after that. And in the one that came after that.

To Sands' dismay, El made it clear right from the start that he controlled everything. He dropped information and made sure it found its way to the right ears. He arranged the time and location of the gunfights. He did not do any of the actual killing, but there was no need. Sands was more than capable of handling himself. In his hands the guns took on lives of their own. They truly became his eyes then, and it was a rare occasion when he needed more than two bullets to kill a man.

The men who came to investigate the legend of the blind gunfighter were not always cartel, of course. Some were bounty hunters eager for the reward the cartels offered. Some were braggarts looking to add to their reputation. Others were just plain curious. Sands killed them all, although he took no pleasure in it. Killing was just another chore for him, just another way of passing the time.

El was not pleased, either. He felt none of the vicious satisfaction he had felt when he had killed Barillo. In fact, he drifted through the days and mostly he just felt nothing at all. The only times he came remotely to life were when he was baiting Sands, and making the other man angry.

Sands hated him with a single-minded passion that El would have found frightening at any other time. Yet he knew what he could get away with. He didn't fight back, he didn't shout and get angry, and he didn't threaten. No matter what El did to him, he just smiled, a chilling smile that spoke of deep patience and a long memory. Sands was not going to forget what El was doing to him. And he was not going to forgive.

El knew it was a sign of how far he had fallen when the only joy he got out of life anymore came from tormenting a blind man. But he didn't care. At night he lay awake for hours on end, thoughts of bitter self-hatred chasing themselves through his brain. He was actually glad Carolina was dead then. He would not have wanted her to see him like this.

Over and over he asked himself what the hell he was doing. He had thought he could find himself again by associating with the only person who could make him feel anything, but in actual fact he seemed to be losing himself. He didn't know who he was anymore. When he looked into the mirror, a stranger stared back. His thoughts were alien now, and music was a foreign language. He had not played his guitar in months.

He became desperate to feel. Something. Anything. One day he forced Sands to ride in the trunk of the car, using the excuse that it was not a good idea for people to see him driving into town with a passenger. It was better for the blind gunfighter to just show up unannounced. That time Sands did fight him, until El shoved his gun under Sands' jaw and told him to decide, get in or stay out, live or die, but make it quick, and Sands gave him a glare of blackest hatred, but he got in the trunk, and so El had no choice but to get back behind the wheel and drive on. And still he felt nothing.

Another time he staged a confrontation in a whorehouse. He and Sands crashed into a room where four cartel men were being serviced by several hookers. Sands killed everyone in the room, so the floor ran red with blood. El waited until they were clear of the building before lying, and saying the women had not been involved. He knew this was not true because one of them had been his contact, but Sands did not know that. He wanted to see what Sands would do if he thought he had killed innocent women.

What happened was Sands well and truly lost his temper for the first time since agreeing to this crazy deal. But when Sands got angry, he became even more calm and deadly than he usually was. He quite casually pulled his gun, and in a split-second it was aimed at El's head. So El grabbed the gun from him. A short but violent fistfight broke out, the first time they had come to blows in weeks. It ended with El bleeding on the ground and Sands unconscious. El stood up and mopped blood out of his eye, but still he felt nothing.

He went into a church one day, a small village church where the priest was saying Mass for five souls. He knelt at a pew in the back and bowed his head, but the words of prayer would not come. There was no comfort to be found in religion anymore, and the coolness of the church felt only clammy and cloying. He left before the communion service and hurried outside, where he stood in the dust and sun, dragging in great gulps of heated air. 

Nothing worked. Nothing he tried made him feel alive anymore. He had made a mistake – quite possibly the last mistake he would ever make -- by choosing to partner with Sands. While he watched, Sands was methodically eliminating the Mexican cartels, but all El Mariachi felt was empty inside.

****

The long hours they spent together on the road were silent and boring. He did not like listening to the radio anymore; music had lost its charm for him. And they never talked. Sands seemed determined to ignore him as much as was humanly possible, and El had never been big on talk anyway. He had no problem with the silences.

Still, he was not yet willing to give in completely to the numbness eating him up from within. Anything was worth a shot. So he said, "Tell me about the coup. Tell me what happened on the Day of the Dead."

Sands said nothing. El scowled. He was not fooled by that passivity; he knew Sands was merely biding his time and waiting for the right moment to take his revenge. Every night when he went to bed, he wondered if he would wake up in the morning, or if Sands would slit his throat instead. It was a minor miracle that he had been so close to the man for three months now, and was still alive to tell it. 

"I want to know what happened," El said. "Tell me now." In the beginning he had had to remind Sands of their deal quite often, using the man's desire to live against him. It had been a while since he had resorted to such tactics, though. Sands hated it, but he knew he had to do what El said. The survival instinct was strong in him, stronger even than his hatred of El Mariachi. So he obeyed. He cursed and snarled, but in the end, he obeyed. 

Right now Sands let out a long, slow breath from between clenched teeth. "All right, fine," he said brightly. "Once upon a time there was a little mariachi who liked to keep guns in his guitar case..." 

He told the whole story, all of it in the light drawl that meant he was but a heartbeat away from killing someone. El listened to it in stolid silence. He had guessed some of it, but most of the tale was brand-new to him. He had not known how Ramirez had become involved, or of Cucuy's betrayal, or that the woman who had saved him from the desert had actually been Barillo's daughter. He had not known about the kid on the bike, and how he had saved Sands' life. And he had not known about the gunfight in the plaza, where Sands had been shot twice, and where Ajedrez had died at the hands of her former lover.

"Did you scream," he asked, "when the doctor took your eyes?"

A quiver ran through Sands, and El knew he was holding onto his self-control by the slimmest of threads. "Yes," he said tersely. 

El only nodded. He had hoped he would feel some of that twisted pity again, the way he had felt when he had first seen the dark hollows in Sands' face. But there was nothing. No pity, no anger, no sense of justice having been served. No nothing. 

Listening to Sands talk, it seemed, was not the answer. Talk was not going to help him. He remembered the morning they had robbed the pharmacy, and still later, when they had stood in the living room of Lorenzo's house, holding guns on each other. Maybe that was what he needed. For too long he had only stood back and watched while Sands did the fighting and the killing. But maybe he needed those things. Action. Tension. Death.

He thought back to Sands' story and made a swift decision. There was one thing left for him to try. He would be taking a terrible risk, but then, if something was not worth taking a risk over, it was not worth having.

Nonetheless, he did feel a slight pang of trepidation. If this did not work, nothing would. If this did not work, he would never feel anything ever again.

And if it turned out that such a fate came to pass, he would not accept it. He would ask Sands to shoot him first. He thought wryly that it would probably be the first – and last – command he would give Sands that Sands would have no trouble obeying.

****

Some parts of Culiacan were green and pretty, but this was not one of them. These streets were gold with sunshine and dust, and black with shadows and old blood. El stood near the mouth of an alley leading between two ancient buildings, his arms crossed. He was waiting.

Sands leaned indolently against the wall to El's left. He was smoking. He looked very bored, but El knew that was a lie. He too was waiting. He knew why they were standing here. Someone was coming. Someone he was meant to kill. And he was ready. They had been in this place for three days, and this was the first time El had let him leave the hotel. He didn't even know where they were, although that was because he hadn't asked. He had learned early on not to ask questions.

The morning ticked by. El waited. For two days he had scouted this territory, learning the routine of his prey. He knew it was only a matter of time.

And then there he was, turning into the alley, right on schedule, the person El had driven all this way to see. The one person who stood between El and total darkness. Because if this desperate plan did not work, then there would be no hope for him at all.

El unfolded his arms and stepped forward, so his prey could see him.

The kid recognized him, and he smiled. "_Quieres mas Chicle?_"

Against the wall, Sands started in surprise. At the sound of the bike, he had dropped the cigarette and gone for his guns, but now he stood very still, unsure of what was happening. Very little surprised him anymore – or maybe he was just that good at controlling his reactions – and it was strange to see him appear so uncertain.

"Here he is," El said. He meant to say more, but that was when the boy looked past him and saw Sands.

"Señor!" The boy's face broke into a sunny grin. He dinged the bell on the handlebars of his bicycle. "You came back!" he cried in excited Spanish. He coasted to a stop, one foot on the pedals, the other on the ground.

Sands flinched. He took a step backward, so his shoulders touched the warm adobe behind him.

El took a deep breath and set his plan in motion. _Please, please..._ "Kill him," he said.

The boy's smile froze. He turned to look at El through very wide dark eyes.

Sands was slow to react, as though he was having trouble convincing himself that he had heard right. "What? Shoot the kid? You're out of your fucking mind."

"Shoot him," El said again. He had no intention of letting the child die, but he meant to push Sands as hard as he could. He meant to push and not let up. He meant to push until Sands snapped, and then he would revel in whatever came next. Because surely then something would happen to make him feel. Something that would remind him why he was still alive.

"You told me we were here to meet someone who threatened my legend," Sands said. He pushed himself off the wall. Every muscle in his body was taut with tension. "You were talking about a _kid?_ That's all kinds of fucked up, El."

The boy gave a small hop on one foot, perhaps trying to estimate how much time it would take for him to set the bicycle in motion and make his escape. "Don't move," El said coldly, and the boy went still.

"He knew you before the legend," he said. It was complete and utter bullshit, and they both knew it. But he stuck to the script, speaking his lines calmly. "He could destroy everything you have worked so hard to create. Are you going to let him do that?"

"He's just a kid!" Sands snapped.

And to El's everlasting joy, something finally stirred in his chest. He could not name the emotion, but just the fact that it was there at all made him want to weep with tired relief. Or it would have, if he had been capable of weeping.

__

Thank you, he breathed, not even sure who he was speaking to. God, maybe. Or Carolina. If she was still watching him from above. _Thank you, thank you, thank you._

"Are you saying you won't do it?" he asked. _Say no, please say no. Give me a reason!_

The boy was in tears now. He stared at Sands with those big eyes. "Señor?"

"We made a deal," El said. He kept his eyes on Sands, not looking at the boy any more. He could not stand to see those tears, knowing he was the cause of them. Whatever else happened on this day, he would forever have to live with the knowledge that he had horribly scarred a child.

On either side of the alley, cars and trucks drove past. The occasional pedestrian passed by. Life was going on out there, but here in the alley, time had come to a standstill. El stood there and watched and that nameless feeling in his chest grew stronger and stronger.

For a long while Sands did nothing. He just stood there, a killer dressed all in black. He was standing in shadow, except for where a single diagonal of light crossed the top of his face. The sunlight played in his hair and reflected off one lens of his sunglasses.

At last a tremor ran through Sands. He lifted his chin. "No way," he said. "Deal's off."

That nameless feeling in his chest surged higher. Almost trembling himself, El drew his gun. "Then you leave me no choice," he said. _Do it, do it please, do it!_

Sands did not even flinch. He turned his head, as though to look the boy in the eye. "Go on home," he said. Still facing the boy, he pulled one of his guns and aimed it at El's head. "You shouldn't have to see this."

The boy started to stand on the pedals, then he froze. He looked fearfully back at El.

El gave him a sharp glower. "Stay right where you are," he said. The boy had done his part, but El could not let him go just yet. If the boy ran, he would shout and raise the alarm. Within minutes the alley would be swarming with the curious, the do-gooders, and the police. And that was not allowed. Not now, when he was so close to having all his answers.

Sands' mouth tightened. He turned to face El again. "Scarring the kid for life. That's nice, El. I bet you were a great father. Good thing your daughter died."

The boy gasped. 

That nameless emotion in El's chest was suddenly joined by another one. And this one he knew the name of. It was rage. It drove out that other emotion, so that his entire being was overwhelmed by that red fury.

He feinted to the right, and Sands fired. The bullet spanged off the wall behind him. The boy cried out in terror and threw himself off the bicycle and to the ground.

El came in from the left. His fists flew. He used the gun. He was aware that he was not in control of himself, but he could not seem to stop.

The sound of the gunshot jerked him back to reality. His head snapped around, and he looked over his shoulder. The boy was holding the gun with both hands. It was Sands' gun. El had grabbed it and thrown it behind him, and in his rage he had never thought the boy would pick it up and use it.

The boy had only shot the wall, though. Maybe he couldn't bring himself to kill anyone. Or maybe he had aimed at El's head and missed.

Sands began to laugh. "Killed by a little kid. What a way to go, hey El?"

El looked back at him. Sands was slumped against the wall. His sunglasses had been knocked off, and his nose was bleeding. One arm was wrapped about his body as if he was in pain. But he was smiling. "Bet you didn't see that one coming, did you?"

"I am not dead," El said. He turned around, and the boy backpedaled in fright. The gun trembled in his hands.

"No one is going to die," he said. "Not here." He held out his hand. He had no desire to hurt the boy any more than he already had. He was not angry anymore. He was empty again. "Give me the gun."

The boy's gaze jumped past him, to Sands. El glanced behind him and saw Sands shake his head.

"No more guns," El said. He tossed his weapon to the dirt. "You see?" He looked to either side, wondering why no one had come running into the alley at the sound of the shot. Then he remembered that these people lived under the shadow of the cartel. Barillo was dead, but someone new had taken his place. No one would want to investigate strange gunshots in the middle of the day. Not if they valued their lives.

"Don't you hurt him!" the boy cried. His voice shook as badly as his hands did. "I'll send you straight to fucking Broadway!"

Still slumped against the wall, Sands made a sound El could not identify. "Oh my God."

"No more," El said. He held up his hands. He judged the boy to be thirteen years old, at that awkward stage of childhood when the adult world was just beginning to open its doors. Surrounded as he was by drugs and poverty, in all actuality the boy had probably not been a child for many long years, but it was obvious that he had tried harder than most to retain his innocence. Today, though, the last of that innocence had deserted him. And there was nobody to blame but the great El Mariachi.

The thought made him sick, and that was another feeling he had not known in far too long, but this one was very unwelcome.

"Señor?" the boy called.

"Sí, sí," Sands sighed. He retrieved his sunglasses then stood up straight with a wince. "I'm coming." He walked toward the boy, giving El a wide berth. He took the gun from the boy and said, "I believe I had two of these."

The boy trotted over to the wall and retrieved Sands' other gun. El could not remember taking that one either, but he supposed he must have.

"Well," Sands said. He ran his sleeve across his face, wiping away the blood from his nose. "Looks like you're on your own again, El."

"No," El said. "You will not be getting away."

"Oh, but I think I will," Sands said. He placed his hand on the boy's shoulder. The boy began to back away, toward the mouth of the alley. He glanced once at his bicycle, and a brief spasm of mourning crossed his face. Then it was gone, and he had eyes only for El.

__

I wasn't going to let you kill him, El wanted to say. _I just needed to feel something again. _But he didn't seem able to speak the words. They stuck in his throat, choking him.

Sands and the boy reached the end of the alley. Sands put his gun away, so he could walk the busy streets of the town without drawing too much attention to himself. "See you around, fucker."

The man and boy disappeared.

*****


	12. Should Old Acquaintances be Forgot

Should Old Acquaintances be Forgot

Disclaimer: I do not own El or Sands or any of the characters in this story.

Rating: PG-13 

Summary: Sands meets up with old friends, and embarks on a new quest

Author's Note: The bathtub scene is directly inspired by one of my all-time favorite Johnny Depp movies. Give yourself points if you can guess which one.

This will be the last update for a few days, until I can get moved into my house and settled in. Look for chapter 13 hopefully on Tuesday. Thanks to everyone who offered me words of encouragement. You guys are the best.

And Happy Birthday, Melody!

****

Walking with his hand on the kid's shoulder was the worst kind of deja vu. Memories were returning to him, things he had forgotten about or not thought of in years.

__

Is someone following you?

Well, it's a little difficult for me to tell right now because I'm kind of having a bad day.

The burning pain of being shot, and the laughable terrible moment when he had tried to see the wound in his arm, completely forgetting that he had no eyes and would never see again.

__

This is it, kid.

I don't hear you running.

Oh yes. There was a fiesta going on in the little brick house on Memory Lane, and he was the uninvited guest.

He could feel the muscles bunch and knot in the kid's shoulder as the kid looked behind them, obsessively checking to see if El was following them. And didn't it just feel like the Day of the Dead all over again. Except this time he was not scared, and this time he would not miss.

But El did not come after them. The kid said, "He's gone."

Sands nodded. "Good." He spoke in Spanish, as comfortable with it as he was with English and the other two languages he spoke fluently. He was good with languages, and picked them up easily. He just preferred not to speak them, seeing nothing wrong with good old American English. "Take me to the church."

"_La iglesia?_" the kid repeated in bewilderment.

"Sí," Sands said. He felt confident in choosing that as his destination. The church was the last place El would go. 

The kid led him toward the church. Sands walked beside him, letting the kid be his eyes. As he moved through the unfamiliar streets, he filed away the information his other senses told him. He counted steps, listened to traffic patterns, smelled the aromas coming from various shops, and felt the pavement change beneath his feet from asphalt to dirt and back again. All this happened automatically, in a part of his subconscious mind that no longer needed to be told what to do. Should he need to navigate these streets alone, later on, he would be able to do it with confidence.

The top part of his mind, the thinking part, was busy exulting in El's meltdown.

He had seen it coming ages ago. El was self-destructing, and in rather spectacular style, too.

So okay, maybe he had been a little slow at first to figure out what El was up to. That was all right. Once he had understood the mariachi's motivations, everything had clicked into place. El was in a very dark place now, darker even than the world that he himself inhabited. Except El was trying to get out, whereas Sands had long ago embraced the darkness.

El had used him as a way of trying to escape the darkness. But he had not allowed himself to be used. El had tried to provoke him so he would fight back and give El an excuse to kill him, but he had not played the game. He had remained passive, and so El was still in the dark.

He knew what El was feeling right now. Or rather, not feeling. Although he wasn't sure why it was such a big deal. There were no advantages to being all warm and fuzzy inside. Objectivity and aloofness were much better states of mind to cultivate. They were the traits of a survivor, of someone who played to win.

But apparently El didn't get that. Or wouldn't get it. Either way, the result was the same. So instead of following his original plan and taking his revenge on the mariachi, he had stayed quiet and done nothing, in anticipation of the day when El reached critical mass.

That day was today. There was no doubt about it. El had asked him to kill a fucking kid, for Christ's sake!

And people called _him_ insane.

"We're there," the kid said.

"Oh good," Sands said. "Is he back there?"

The kid looked around. "No."

"Even better. Take me inside."

The kid – whom part of his brain had already dubbed Chiclet – led him up a set of stone steps, and through the double doors. Inside the church it was cool. The air smelled of incense and desperate prayer. It was quiet, too, which was good. He would not have wanted to walk in right in the middle of a Mass.

He sat on a pew near the back. The kid sat beside him.

He wondered about that kid, Chiclet. Still selling gum, four years later. Still willing to help him.

__

Quieres mas chicle?

An icepick of cold slipped into his heart. When someone asked, "Do you want more gum?" that meant you had already bought some. It meant you were a repeat customer.

He turned toward the kid. "Did you know him?"

"No," Chiclet said. "Yes. I mean, no. He bought some gum from me yesterday. I remembered him."

Sands frowned. El was more messed up than he had thought, if the mariachi had gone to all that trouble to make sure he had the right kid. "How's sales?"

"Señor?"

"You know what I mean," Sands said. "Gum for the stupid tourists, sure. What about your real customers?"

The kid said nothing. Sands shook his head. What a fucked-up country this was, when even kids worked for the cartels selling their product.

"I don't," Chiclet said. "Not yet, at least."

"But you will," Sands said. "When you've proven your salesmanship skills."

"Sí," the kid said miserably.

"Jesus," Sands said.

The kid did not respond. He was probably hanging his head in shame, Sands thought.

Well, there was nothing for it. When he had first taken up his new occupation as a blind gunfighter, he had brought hell to this corner of Mexico, but he had not been back since. Apparently it was time to clean house again.

It pissed him off to think of the kid selling drugs for the cartel. Because the kid was really all right. The kid had saved his life on the Day of the Dead, finding help first from Ramirez and then from a doctor. And the kid had been willing to kill El Mariachi in order to help him yet again. No one had ever done that for him before, stuck their neck out like that for him. Even his own country had abandoned him. So he was oddly touched by the kid's gesture.

"Oh!" the kid said softly.

Sands tensed. He listened hard. A set of footsteps was coming down the aisle toward him, but there was no familiar jingle of chains. "Quien es?"

"Es Jorge," the kid said. "El puede ayudarnos." _He can help us._

He frowned. "Jorge Ramirez?"

"Sí."

"Shit," Sands said.

"Well, well," a voice said from his right. Jorge Ramirez, retired FBI agent. "Didn't think I'd ever see you again."

"Some of us are more lucky, I guess," Sands said tightly.

Ramirez huffed. "What are you doing here?"

It occurred to him that Ramirez could be a good source of information. He smiled. "Feel like a little inter-agency cooperation?"

"What do you want?" Ramirez said flatly. He sounded as hostile as he had at the start of their lunch in the café that day, when he had said he was retired and would not go after Barillo.

Of course, they both knew how _that_ had turned out.

He started to speak, but Chiclet beat him to it. The kid spilled everything, starting with El Mariachi's return and ending with the episode in the alley. Twice during the story his voice cracked and tumbled into the deeper registers of an adult, and Sands had to bite his lip hard to keep from grinning. His own adolescence was vague and barely remembered, but he hoped the kid was doing all right. He wondered if acne was a problem here in Mexico.

"El Mariachi," Ramirez said.

"Esta loco," the kid said emphatically.

"Are you all right?" Ramirez asked him.

Silence followed this question, and Sands wondered if the kid was crying. He supposed he ought to have asked if the kid was okay, but it had never occurred to him to wonder. His life was threatened hourly; the novelty of having a gun aimed at him had long ago worn off.

The kid babbled on again, about how scared he had been, how he hadn't thought he could pull the trigger, how surprised he was that he had done it. Sands sat through all this with growing impatience. Listening to the kid, you'd think he was the first one in history to try to shoot someone.

"What has happened to him?" Ramirez asked. "Something has done this to him."

"Or maybe," Sands said brightly, "he was always a few jokers short of a full deck, and no one ever realized it before. I mean, honestly. Who walks around in that outfit all the time?"

Ramirez let out an angry hiss. "I'm sure being in your company for so long had nothing to do with it."

That pissed him off. He was the one who had been beaten up out there in the alley. He was the one had been El's fucking slave for three months. El had been messed up long before they had embarked on their strange and twisted journey.

Surprising him again, the kid came to his defense. "He didn't do anything wrong," Chiclet said. "He wouldn't shoot me, even though El Mariachi hurt him."

Ramirez made a sound that clearly indicated his lack of sympathy for Sands.

"Look," Sands drawled. "Why don't you just tell me what you know about the cartel in this area, and I'll be out of your hair before the day is done? How's that sound?"

It was an offer Ramirez couldn't turn down. He waited for the FBI agent to start talking, but it was Chiclet who responded. The kid turned to him and grabbed his arm. "What if El Mariachi tries to kill me again?"

And whoa, what was this? He actually felt sorry for the kid. There was no mistaking the fear in the boy's voice, or in that panicky grip on his arm. This kid, he thought, had once sat beside him in the back seat of a taxi. The kid had refused to shoot the man following him, but the kid had also given him that man's gunbelts, which he wore to this day.

"El was never going to let you die," he said. He tried hard to keep the usual edge from his voice, and remind himself that he was speaking to a kid. A kid whose voice was changing, but still just a kid. "He told me to kill you because he knew I wouldn't do it. And then he would have an excuse to kill me. And then, because he would still be fucked up in the head, he would have an excuse to kill himself. Savvy?"

The kid's breathing quickened. It sounded like he was about to cry.

Ramirez swore in soft Spanish. "Come on," he said. He patted the arm of the pew.

"Go with him," Sands said. He gave Chiclet a nudge. "He'll keep you safe."

"You too," Ramirez said.

Startled, Sands blurted, "What?"

"You're coming with me," Ramirez said. "I'll tell you what I know, and you can leave first thing in the morning. But tonight, I don't want you two here in town."

"Why, Jorge, I didn't realize you were running a motel up there," Sands smirked. But he was already standing up, pushing the kid ahead of him. The prospect of staying the night in Jorge Ramirez's house was incredibly appealing. Actually, the thought of spending the night anywhere that did not include El Mariachi sounded like heaven right about now.

"Shut up before I change my mind," Ramirez said.

"Ah," Sands said with a grin. "Still feeling guilty over abandoning me to bleed to death, aren't you?"

There was a long silence. Then Ramirez said quietly, "Yes."

Sands did not have an answer to that. So he just put his hand on the kid's shoulder again and let his saviors lead him from the church.

****

Ramirez's house smelled like taco soup. A cheap clock hung on the wall, ticking out the seconds. No carpet, all wood and tile floors. The bedroom where Sands was to stay was not large, but the bed was comfortable and the water in the bathroom was hot. He decided he could have done a lot worse than come here.

So because he owed Ramirez, he told the FBI agent the truth. "The Colombians have a contract out on me."

Jorge was making dinner. Something that smelled good and involved the chopping of many vegetables. The sound of the knife slicing through peppers did not hesitate, but Ramirez sounded wary as he said, "How do you know this?"

"Because two of them tried to kill me a few months ago," Sands said. He sat at the kitchen table, smoking. The kid was watching TV in the living room.

"You are a very wanted man," Ramirez said. "Everywhere I go I hear talk about you."

"Yeah?" Sands exhaled smoke through his nose. He liked the idea of men talking about him, spreading his legend. "What do they say?"

"Oh, you know," Jorge said lightly. "It's all bullshit."

"Bullshit doesn't have Colombian drug lords hunting them down," Sands said. He stubbed his cigarette out on the table.

Evidently Ramirez did not see this, for the tone of his voice did not change. "Sometimes it does."

"So what do you know about the cartel in this area?" Sands asked. He wondered if he could ask Jorge to come with him. The man was a good shot, and a damn good agent. And he was a bit of a legend himself, having captured two high-profile criminals during a stellar career.

"Not as much as you think I do," Jorge said. He dumped vegetables into a skillet, and the sound of sizzling filled the kitchen. 

"Liar," Sands said. "Say, did you get a commendation for taking out Barillo?"

"I did," Ramirez said. "Although officially, it never happened."

"I bet," Sands said. The smell of cooking made his stomach growl. For too long he had been grabbing quick meals in cheap restaurants or eating in a stuffy hotel room while El went out and did some reconnaissance. It was nice to be served a home-cooked meal for a change. "What about my lovely little agency?"

"Oh, they sniffed about," Ramirez said. "They didn't look too hard, though. Just long enough to say they couldn't find you. Then they packed up and went back home."

"Assholes." He tapped another cigarette out of the pack and put it between his lips. He raised his lighter and was chagrined to discover his hands were shaking.

Well, why not? It was one thing to suspect his own government had disavowed him, but another altogether to have those suspicions confirmed. He had always known they had hated and feared him, and here was his proof. At a time when they should have done everything they could in order to bring him in and contain him, they had let him twist in the wind.

It would be sweet beyond compare to walk into Langley now and show them all that he was still alive. To hear them stutter and stammer before he put a bullet in their heads. To smell their fear. Yet the idea of returning to the U.S. was just not that appealing. Not even to take his revenge. He wasn't an American, not anymore. But he wasn't a Mexican, either. Hell, he didn't know what he was.

And sitting around on his ass wasn't going to help him figure it out. "So what do you know, Jorge?"

****

The kid stayed through dinner, then Ramirez took him home. Sands took the opportunity to move through the house, learning the layout and position of every piece of furniture. He ran his hands over the spines of the books on their shelves, and tapped out meaningless messages on the computer keyboard. So many avenues of communication in the modern world, and they were all closed to him. All he had left was his guns.

But oh, how they sang.

Ramirez had told him about the cartel presence in Culiacan. They were strong and growing stronger. The largest threat in northern Mexico. They owned the city and the surrounding areas. And they were on high alert.

"I should have come here years ago," he had said over dinner. But he knew the reason he hadn't. Being back here was stifling. On every street corner there were memories waiting to be rediscovered. The ride to the house had nearly undone him. Sitting in the back seat of Jorge's car with the kid beside him had made him pant with remembered fear. This place was not good for him. He needed to get the hell out, and quickly.

He drew a hot bath in the guest bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub while the water poured out. His father had been fond of pithy little sayings, and one of Sheldon Sands Sr.'s favorites had been, "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger." As a kid he had always sneered at the phrase, but now he could see the point it was trying to make. Maybe it was good that he had come back here. He could face his demons and hopefully lay the nightmares to rest. He could go on with his life and not be afraid anymore.

The tub was full. He took off his clothes, then carefully set an ashtray and a glass of tequila on the edge of the tub, within easy reach. He slid into the water, groaning a little as the heat came into contact with the bruises left by El's temper tantrum in the alley.

"Sands?" Jorge was back. The FBI agent's voice got louder as he neared the guestroom.

"In here," Sands called. He walked his fingers along the edge of the tub until he found the glass of tequila, and drank half of it in one swallow.

Ramirez knocked on the door, which he had left ajar. "I have news."

"Yeah?" He set the glass down.

"El Mariachi has left." Ramirez remained outside the bathroom, and his voice was slightly muffled. Which was just as well. Jorge didn't have any bubble bath, and if he had come inside he would have gotten quite an eyeful.

"How do you know?" Sands asked.

"I spoke to a friend, who saw him leave. He was driving a black convertible."

That was El's car, all right. He took another drink of tequila. "When was this?"

"Around four o'clock, my friend said."

"Did you tell the kid?"

"Yes." Ramirez hesitated. "He will not soon forget today."

Sands snorted. "Who would?"

"I just thought you should know." Ramirez walked away.

Sands tipped his head back against the tile. So El had gone. That was good, but the question was, for how long? El had been chasing him for over a year. He found it hard to believe that the mariachi would quit now.

Then again, El's sanity was in doubt these days. Perhaps El had decided it was best to get away from him. He was a bad influence maybe. Sands chuckled to himself. As if psychosis was contagious.

In the end, it didn't matter where El had gone, or why. The important thing was that El was gone. Period. End of story. Now he could get on with his business. There was cartel here that needed to be eliminated. He had a job to do.

Faintly he heard the sound of canned laughter. A TV show. Ramirez was in the living room, watching a lame sitcom. For years he had lived out of motels so cheap the walls were thin enough to hear the TV in the next room, or the arguing, or the sex. But this sound was different, for some reason. This was not some stranger in a strange place. This was a man he knew, in a house where he had received a hot meal and been given a bed to sleep in.

Maybe, he mused, he could make this place his base of operations. He didn't necessarily have to leave at the crack of dawn. It would take time to scout out the area and learn about the cartel and its activities. It would be useful to have this house to come back to. In the morning he would ask Jorge about staying on for a while.

There was no shame in it, he told himself. He was just using Jorge, the way he had always used people. Taking advantage of the situation. After all, it wasn't like he _wanted_ to stay.

No, he didn't want to stay here at all.

******


	13. I’ll Take the Low Road, You Take the Hig...

I'll Take the Low Road, You Take the High Road

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the lovely characters of OUATIM. They belong to the sheer genius of Robert Rodriguez and the extremely talented actors who brought them to life.

Rating: PG-13 for language

Summary: El hits rock bottom, and Sands begins clawing his way up

Author's Note: This chapter references events in El Mariachi and Desperado. Assume three years take place between those two films, and eight years between Desperado and OUATIM.

This chapter also breaks from my usual tradition of only writing from one POV. Both El and Sands speak in this chapter.

Lastly, many thanks to everyone who offered me kind words on my new house. Things went well, although I'm still settling in. Annoyingly enough I haven't got a phone yet, so I have to get online and post using someone else's computer, but hopefully soon I will have my own Internet connection. Until then however, updates may be infrequent, and I may not be able to respond to all my reviews and e-mails. Thanks for your patience, guys, especially you, Melody. You're the best.

****

El Mariachi had left Culiacan with no clear idea of his destination. He only knew that he had to get away. Far away.

He was shaking all over. _Carolina, Carolina mi amor, what is happening to me? Help me._

If he had not been before, he was damned to the darkest depths of hell now. He had ordered another man to kill a child. For purely selfish reasons.

Twilight was falling. In the west, the sky was on fire, blazing with red and orange. The first, bravest stars were already glimmering overhead. El pulled the car over to the side of the road, stopped the engine, and got out.

He began to walk. The ground was uneven, and as the last light left the sky, it became harder to see where he was going. He stumbled on loose rocks and dust, falling to his knees, scraping his palms raw.

_Carolina, Carolina!_

A scream wrenched itself from his throat. He fell again and this time he did not get up.

Echoing through the years, he heard Sands saying, _Well, frankly, because you have nothing to live for_.

Nothing to live for. No reason to keep going. His life was empty, devoid of all meaning.

This afternoon, when Sands had refused to kill the boy, he had felt hope. Hope, like a single ray of light bursting through the clouds after a thunderstorm. Hope, that swell of emotion that had filled his chest, that emotion he had not been able to name.

Hope. If a man like Sands, who had no regard for anyone except himself, was willing to trade his life for that of a child, then maybe there was hope for him.

Hope. For himself. Because if Sands could do it, maybe he could too. Maybe he could feel again, and learn to value life and all its dark beauty.

He thought of the guitar case he had left in the trunk of the car. Anyone who drove past could stop and steal it. He did not care. Let them take it.

All his life he had wanted to be a musician. Some of his earliest memories were of toddling around his parents' hacienda, a guitar in one hand. He had worshipped his brother Cesar, but Cesar had never understood music the way he had. They had grown apart, and he had watched helplessly as his brother became more and more involved in the world of power and drugs.

The last time Cesar had visited home, he had been full of scorn for the simple house and the family who lived there. "You will never be anything," he had said. He had driven away in his wealthy car, surrounded by watchful men in sunglasses.

The words had stung. Shortly after that he had left home, determined to prove himself, to _be someone_. He would be a famous mariachi, like his father and his grandfather before him. His mother had wept to see him go, but his father had simply nodded in understanding.

Work had been scarce, and he had come close to despair a few times. He had nothing but the clothes on his back and his guitar. He was hungry and tired. But he had his music and he had hope. He did not give up.

Then Acuña. Moco. Azul. Domino. A guitar case full of guns and a shoot-out in the middle of the street. He had never shot anybody before. He knew how to handle a gun, but he had never used one before for anything except target practice.

When it was all over, the woman he loved was dead, he could not play the guitar, and he was on the run from a drug cartel that wanted to kill him.

Now here he was, fifteen years later, and nothing had changed. The woman he loved was long dead, music was dead to him, and his soul was dead.

All he had ever wanted was to play music. When he had met Carolina he had rediscovered the guitar, and the soaring joy it could bring him. When she sang his heart nearly broke. He had married her and she had given him a daughter, and he had been happy, truly happy for the first time in his life.

Then Marquez. The past could be forgotten but it could not be avoided. Sunlight glinting off metal. Blood in the dust. He had died that day, lying there in the street beside his wife and child.

Strange, then, that he was still up and walking around. Maybe that was why he could not feel anything. He was dead, and he just didn't know it.

He decided he would return to the place where they were buried. His Carolina and his beloved daughter. He would lie down beside them, and he would finally let himself die.

The storm had passed. He no longer felt like screaming. He got to his feet and walked back to the car.

****

The graves were located in a cemetery outside the town where they had died. Just their names. No dates. Two simple stone markers side by side. There was room on the left for another marker. His own, if ever he should find someone who would bring his body back here.

He dropped to his knees in the dirt. He ran his fingers over the carvings in the stone. He whispered their names.

He felt nothing. No grief. No anger. He was dead inside. Why was his heart still beating?

Softly he sang to them. The lullaby his daughter had loved. The _cancíon_ that had always made Carolina smile. He sang until his throat was sore and he could not sing anymore. By then it was almost dawn, so he simply lay down on the ground, closed his eyes, and waited to die.

****

The sound of engines woke him. He rolled onto his back and squinted up into a painfully bright sky. An airplane was coming in to land. One of the local families had a private landing strip.

His head throbbed sickly. He ached, deep in his joints. He was still alive.

Groaning, he forced himself to his feet. He staggered, almost fell, and righted himself. He stood uncertainly under the hot sun. He could go into the town, this place that had seen the last of his happiness. People there would recognize him. They would be happy to see him. They would welcome him back, and he could fashion a semblance of a life again.

Or he could return to the guitar town, and try and find his old life there. The padre who had married them was probably still there, mourning the brother whom Cucuy had shot, but still making guitars.

Or he could strike out in a new direction. He had no desire to resume the hunt for Sands. That man had proven himself, as far as El was concerned. Sands was still plenty dangerous, but his guns were not aimed at the people of Mexico. He could be forgotten.

He decided he would return to Culiacan. He would make his apologies to the boy he had terrified. And then?

He would let his fate determine itself.

****

Morning dawned hot and sticky. After a quick shower, Sands shuffled into Ramirez's kitchen, fumbled for a chair, and sat down. "Coffee?"

"Just made it," Ramirez grunted. Clearly he was not a morning person, either. Another point in his favor.

A mug was set down in front of him. Sands wrapped his hands about it, testing the warmth of the ceramic. The coffee was hot, but not so hot as to be undrinkable. He took a long drink, reveling in the rush of caffeine through his system.

"Leaving?" Jorge said.

"Eventually," Sands said. He drank from the mug again. "What's for breakfast?"

"I don't eat breakfast," Jorge said. 

Sands sighed, a martyr's long-suffering sigh. He stood up and left the kitchen, taking his coffee with him.

He went out onto the front porch and sat down. Sunshine streamed onto the chair, bathing his face in warm light he could only feel, never see.

He would send Jorge into town today to ask questions. He needed more information before going on the hunt. Everyone within a fifty-mile radius would know he was back in town soon, depending on whom the kid had blabbed to, and how quickly they spread the word. He needed to lay low for a while. He would quietly gather information and make his plans, then strike when the time was right. That was how he had operated in his former life, and the old methods still served him well even now.

He sipped at his coffee. He was hungry, but not hungry enough to go back inside and tell Ramirez make breakfast. Sitting here alone in the sun was quite nice, actually. It had been a long time since he had been free of the demands of others.

Inside the house, Ramirez turned the TV on. A news anchor chirped brightly about the previous day's murders and rapes and robberies, before turning things over to the weatherman, who announced in ponderous tones that today would be hot and sunny.

Sands finished his coffee. He fingered the guns he was wearing. He wondered if Jorge had a good cleaning kit. He needed to keep the guns in good condition. They were all he had now.

Commercials came on the TV. A puff of breeze made its way onto the porch, and he turned his face up, grateful for the cool air. He realized he had no idea what day it was, what month even. Always before there had been a certain freedom to not being beholden to time, but now he wanted to know. It seemed important that he know.

A bell dinged. He turned his head sharply, to hear better. The sound came again, and he sat up a little straighter. What the hell?

The kid rode his bike right up to the porch, then mounted the steps. "Señor!"

"Don't you have school?" Sands asked.

"It's summer," the kid said in Spanish. He walked up to Sands and stopped. "I thought you would be gone."

"Not yet," Sands said with a tight grin. He spoke in easy Spanish. "You can't get rid of me that easily."

"Good," Chiclet said. He sounded very satisfied.

Sands frowned. "Why is that good?" He reached into his pocket and began rolling a cigarette. He was low on tobacco, though. When he sent Jorge into town for information, he'd ask the FBI agent to get him some more smokes, too.

"I wanted to see you again," Chiclet said. Chair legs scraped the wooden porch boards as he dragged a chair over and sat down. 

"Why?" Sands asked. He finished the cigarette and popped it in his mouth.

"Because," the kid said.

"Because?" he prompted. He fished his lighter out. But it was out of lighter fluid, and despite shaking it, it would not produce a flame. "Shit."

"Because I wanted to," the kid said stubbornly. "I like you."

Sands grinned. "Yeah?" He had never been one to turn down a compliment.

"I never knew anyone like you," Chiclet said. "You stood up to the cartel. No one else here ever did that before."

His amusement died. So that was it. The kid looked up to him. The kid remembered the Day of the Dead and thought he had been a hero. The kid didn't know about the utter terror he had felt in the back of that taxi when he had realized he was all alone. The kid didn't know what it felt like to have your eyes ripped from your skull while you were screaming and fighting with every ounce of your strength. The kid didn't know jackshit.

He was ready to say just that when the kid shocked him by putting a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry for what they did to you," Chiclet said.

He froze, his mouth still open so he could yell at the kid. No one had ever said that to him before. Always there had been an implicit understanding that he deserved what had happened to him. Having his eyes torn out was his punishment for being an arrogant American bastard who had tried to manipulate Mexico for his own gain.

The kid truly didn't know shit. The kid didn't know he was a bad man. The kid didn't know he had nearly failed his psych exam at Langley because he had been too busy laughing at them to pay attention to what he was doing. The kid didn't know about the knives in the dark or the silenced pistols. All the kid knew was that he had once spent ten dollars for bubble gum, a hell of a lot more than that so the kid would be his guide, and that he had killed three members of Barillo's cartel after being blinded.

He closed his mouth and sat back in the chair. "Yeah, me too," he said hoarsely.

"Are you going to stay?" Chiclet asked. And damn if he didn't sound like he hoped the answer would be yes.

"For a little while," Sands said. He waited to see what the kid would say next.

Chiclet did not disappoint. "I hope you stay for a long time."

He gave the kid a thin smile. "Well, that depends," he drawled. "Who did you talk to about what happened yesterday?"

"I didn't," the kid said. "I mean, I didn't tell anybody."

Sands frowned. He rolled his cigarette between his fingers. He found it hard to believe that the kid had kept his mouth shut over something as traumatic as having his life threatened by the great El Mariachi. "You didn't tell anyone?"

"Jorge told me not to," the kid said. "He said it wasn't a good idea for people to know you were back in town."

"Jorge's right," he said. "That would be a very bad thing."

"I hope you stay," Chiclet said. "And I hope you get them all. I hope you kill them."

He was talking of course about the cartel presence in the area. Sands smiled again, this time showing his teeth. "Oh, I will."

****

El drove north. He was still going to Culiacan, but first he had a stop to make. He had more graves to visit.

He entered the town from the eastern side, driving past the old yellow stone house where his friends had died. He slowed as he passed it, hoping the sight would spark some old hatred in his heart, but nothing happened.

Lorenzo's house was empty. The shades were drawn, the windows closed. El smashed in the kitchen window and slithered in through the opening. Inside, it was explosively hot. The house smelled of mildew.

He walked through the halls, touching the doorframes, but not going into any of the rooms. He wondered why no one had bought the house, and then he remembered that Lorenzo had left the house to Fideo. With Fideo's death, it had passed to him. He owned this place now, every rotting board and locked window.

He stopped in the doorway to Lorenzo's room. A TV stood in one corner. Lorenzo's guitar case was along the base of the wall. His burgundy jacket, the one he had worn because he said it turned the ladies on, hung on the doorknob of the closet.

El walked over to it. The shiny metal buttons were dusty. He brushed his fingers over the fabric. He could remember when Lorenzo had bought the jacket for a song and a wink at a market stall in a village outside Mexico City. Fideo had laughed and said he looked stupid, and Lorenzo had pointed at Fideo's striped jacket and asked who looked more stupid.

He ripped the jacket off the doorknob and buried his face in it. He breathed deep, smelling dust and heat and faintly, the scent of Lorenzo's cologne. Deliberately he conjured up memories of Lorenzo smiling, laughing as he played his guitar, dancing with a pretty señorita.

Nothing happened. He pressed Lorenzo's jacket to his cheek and groaned. _Why can't I cry? Carolina, why can't I shed any more tears?_

After a time he carefully folded the jacket. He laid it on the bed.

He left the house.

****

Jorge came back from town with cigarettes, groceries, and information. The cartel in this area was led by a man named Carlos Alvarado. He had been in Barillo's employ. He was ruthless, hated by most, and feared by all.

"That's really swell," Sands said over lunch. "But where is he? Hated and feared doesn't tell me where he lives, Jorge."

"If you want his address why don't you look in the phone book?" Ramirez asked.

"Fuck you," Sands muttered. "All right, fine. So you weren't that helpful today. Tomorrow you'll do better."

"What is this?" Ramirez asked. "You think you can come into my house and give me orders now?"

Sands restrained himself from responding with a great effort. _Well, yeah._

"That is not how it works," Ramirez said. "You want information, you have to earn it."

He sighed. "How much are you asking? Just remember, though, you won't get paid until I get paid. And that won't happen until I find this Alvarado guy and smoke him."

"I don't want your money," Jorge said. He sounded pissed.

Not want money? What the hell? "Then what _do_ you want?" he asked.

"I've got a backyard that needs weeding," Ramirez offered.

Sands sat back, incredulous. "You're joking, right?"

"Do I sound like I'm joking?" asked Ramirez. Metal clinked as he set his fork down.

"I'm fucking blind, remember?" Sands snarled. "How the hell am I supposed to weed your garden?"

"Simple enough," Jorge said. "The weeds have prickers."

"Cute," Sands smirked. "Real cute."

"If you get started now you should be finished by dinner," Jorge said. He stood up, taking his plate to the sink and rinsing it off.

Sands just sat there. He had never pulled a weed in all his life. Unless you counted the drugs he had taken in college.

"If you want some help--" Jorge started to say.

Sands stood up so fast he knocked over his glass, which fortunately was empty. "I don't need anybody's help," he snapped. Before Jorge could say anything else, he made his way around the table and left the kitchen.

When he went outside, he made sure to let the door slam shut behind him.

****

That night he sat on the edge of his bed, wrapped in a terry cloth bathrobe that was a size too big. His clothes were grass-stained and in the wash; Jorge had promised to make a trip into town tomorrow to buy him some new ones.

He ached all over, especially his back and shoulders. But it was a _good_ ache, strangely enough. He had worked in the yard for hours, on his knees pulling weeds. He had stopped only when the kid - who had mysteriously arrived just in time to miss all the hard labor - had brought him a glass of lemonade. "Jorge says you can stop now."

"Oh, really?" He had sat back on his heels and drained the glass in one swallow. A light buzzing noise had filled his head, and he had wondered how close he was to having a heatstroke.

He had not been interested in dinner. Just a hot bath. His hands were blistered and cut to hell, but Jorge had given him a topical antibiotic that had taken away the worst of the sting. The FBI agent had started to walk away, then he had turned around. "Thank you."

He had a glass of tequila now, but the drink did not interest him either. He was more interested in the strange things he was thinking right now.

Things like, _How long can I stay here?_ Things like, _How long before Jorge kicks me out?_ Things like, _How long before the kid figures out I'm a fake?_

He didn't know why he was thinking those things.

He eased back onto the bed and bunched up the pillows so he could recline on them and be half-sitting, half-lying down. He crossed his feet at the ankle and tapped one foot restlessly against the other.

He was in danger of going soft here. He knew it, but somehow it didn't seem important. The cartel wasn't important. Carlos Alvarado wasn't important. The contract the Colombians had on him wasn't important.

What was important? The kid. Jorge. The fact that he felt safe for the first time in over four years.

_I could stay here_, he thought. _I really could._

In his former life he had always been afraid of settling down, of letting himself stand still. Now the thought held enormous appeal. Sands tried to imagine himself here in a few weeks, or even a few months, and something painful twisted in his chest.

Nope, no question about it. He wanted to stay.

Which meant one thing. The cartel in this area had to go. His safety now was just an illusion. There would be no real safety until the last remnants of Armando Barillo's operation were obliterated.

Starting tomorrow, he was going to make it happen.

******


	14. When a Body Meets a Body

When a Body Meets a Body

Disclaimer: I don't own El. I'm glad I don't. He frightens me.

Rating: R for dark themes and violence

Summary: El loses it completely, and is "saved" by a passing stranger.

Author's Note: The title of this chapter is part of a quote from the incredible book, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. 

Several people have asked me if I'm making this story up as I go, or if it is planned. The answer is: a little bit of both. I do have some things planned, but I normally try not to plan too far ahead. I find that takes away the spontaneity of things if I do that. So I have a general idea of what will happen next, but mostly the story writes itself as I go along.

Thanks to my great beta, Melody!

****

Just after noon, the car ran out of gas. El let it coast over to the side of the road, and when it quit altogether, he took the keys out of the ignition and got out of the car. He removed his guitar case from the trunk and began walking along the road.

He was going to Culiacan, and nothing was going to stop him.

The day was excruciatingly hot. Cars barreled past, causing him to stagger as their heated wake buffeted him. Grit and stone crunched under his boots. He liked the sound they made, and the way they rolled under his feet. He decided he was glad he had ditched the car. From now on he would walk wherever he went, the way he had when he had first left his home and gone to seek his fortune as a mariachi. Maybe then he would be able to rediscover the spirit of adventure that had infused him as a younger man.

For a time he walked faster, his spirits buoyed by the thought of finding redemption in the physical act of walking. Every step was an atonement that brought him closer to peace. Every bead of sweat that rolled down his face was a tear he should have shed over the years.

But eventually the heat and exertion took its toll. His step slowed. His shoulders slumped. He transferred the guitar case from his right hand to his left and back again. He did not stop walking, though. To stop would be to admit defeat. And he had never admitted when he was beaten. He never had, and he never would.

To pass the time he talked to Carolina. She walked beside him, just far enough away that when he reached out for her, his straining fingers could not quite touch her. She wore a sheer gown of white that clung to the curves of her body, and white sandals. The skirt of the dress swayed as she glided along beside him. There were flowers in her hair. She was smiling.

He asked her to forgive him. He had done terrible things in his life, but he had never threatened a child until two days ago. He had never wanted to become like the men he had spent so long running from. 

He had never imagined he would become soulless.

Carolina smiled and caressed his hair. When he fell, she stood before him, holding out one hand to help him up.

He walked again, weaving in loopy patterns across the road. Once he found himself walking doggedly across hardpan and grit, and Carolina gently turned him around so he encountered the road again. She made sure he followed it, reminding him that the road would lead him to Culiacan.

"And my redemption," he said.

Carolina nodded and said this was true.

She was there when he fell for the second -- and last -- time. As he lay there with his face in the dust, she knelt beside him and pressed a kiss to her palm, then laid her hand on his cheek. 

He looked up at her. "I didn't mean to kill her," he said. His eyes burned, but there were no tears. "I loved her."

Carolina assured him that he was not responsible for his daughter's death.

"But he told me," he tried to say.

She shushed him with one perfectly manicured nail touching his lips. She told him that Sands did not know everything. He had been a good father. He had not gotten his daughter killed.

"And you?" El whispered.

Carolina said that she had chosen her own fate. Marquez had given her a choice, and she had chosen her husband, knowing she would die for it. There was nothing he could have done, she said.

He asked her to kiss him.

She leaned forward and the air stirred around her, whipping her hair about her head and rippling through her dress. She looked like an angel. When her lips touched his, he gasped aloud and closed his eyes.

And then she was gone, and El slept.

****

He dreamed.

In the dream he was onstage, a mariachi again. He was playing a lively song he had written himself. It had no proper name, but he thought of it as _Cancíon del Mariachi_. He smiled as he played. The notes sprinkled from his guitar like bright drops of silver shining in the air. The music swirled about him, reminding him of his first love.

He stalked up and down the stage, playing his heart out. He sang loudly, tossing his head and grinning. It had been far too long since he had been just a mariachi, and not a killer or a man on the run.

He wished the song did not have to reach its conclusion, but all too soon it did. He ended it with a proud flourish, and then stood there under the lights, waiting for the applause.

The crowd did not clap. They did not cheer. Only silence greeted him.

He raised a hand to his face, shielding his eyes from the glare of the lights. The moment he did, the house lights came on and he could see his audience.

Everyone had ever known was standing there. They were watching him dispassionately. He took a nervous step back, feeling pinned under the spotlight that was still relentlessly trained on him.

And then they began to talk about him.

"He plays with no passion," said Lorenzo.

"His fingering is all wrong," said Quino. "He is too tense."

"He was off key," said Fideo.

"A miserable performance," agreed his father. He shook his head in disappointment. "He is not fit to touch that guitar."

"I am going to kill you," said Moco.

"That is my guitar case," said Azul. "I want it back."

"We take something away, we replace it with something else," said his brother Cesar, known as Bucho to the rest of the world.

"Que quieres en la vida?" asked Carolina. There were flowers in her hair. She was holding their daughter, who glared mutely at him in accusation.

"He doesn't want anything. He has nothing to live for," Sands said as he strolled through the audience. He still had his eyes, but he was dressed all in black, not the ridiculous outfit he had been wearing when he had met El in the cantina.

_That is not true,_ El wanted to say, but his voice had deserted him. He had used it up singing and now he had nothing left.

They continued talking as though he was not there. They listed his faults. They insulted him. They laughed at him and his music.

"Papa's little _guitarista_," Cesar said. "And look at you now." He laughed.

His daughter put her thumb in her mouth and pouted.

"He got me killed," said Campa. "I should never have tried to help him."

"Hey, don't tell me," said Fideo. "It happened to me too."

"Him and his damn revenge," said the American who had tried to stop him from chasing Bucho. "I got knifed on the street because of him."

"Is anybody here not dead because of him?" asked Lorenzo.

Sands exhaled smoke into the air above their heads. "I'm still alive," he grinned. But even as he said it, bloody tears began to run down his face. His eyes disappeared, and dark red holes took their place.

In horror, El watched as blood and wounds appeared on each of the people in the audience. Bullet holes opened in Carolina's skin. Blood covered his daughter's white dress.

They continued talking as they died, telling their stories, how he had killed them. The house lights went out, and only the spotlight remained. He could smell blood and gunpowder, and faintly, the tang of dust.

"Stop," he pleaded. "Please stop."

He could hear the sounds of their bodies hitting the floor. But still the dead kept talking about him. Accusing him.

"Stop!" he shouted. He flung himself off the stage, intending to run into their midst and confront them. He would make them stop talking. He would make them shut up.

The spotlight did not follow him this time. He plunged into the darkness and misjudged the lip of the stage. He fell forward, and although it was not a long distance to the floor, he simply kept falling, and falling…

****

He woke with a start to the sound of voices. At first he thought he was still dreaming, then he realized there were only two voices this time. They were coming from somewhere over his head. He was lying down, and that was the only thing right about his situation, because he did remember falling off the stage. 

The voices spoke in Spanish. "Heatstroke, maybe. He fainted."

"You're sure this is him?"

"Who else carries a guitar case around?"

"Did you check inside it?"

"Hell, no. I saw him lying there and I drove out to get you. I didn't even stop to see if he was alive."

"Jesus, Ramon, how do you get anything done?" Gravel crunched as a set of footsteps drew near. Something clicked, and he heard the lid of his guitar case being lifted.

He opened his eyes. It was twilight, almost full dark. That too was strange. His last memory was of a bright afternoon sky.

A man stood over him, just a silhouette against the purpling sky. The man was holding a gun. "Don't move, amigo."

He squinted up at the man. "Who are you?" he tried to say, but his voice was as stricken as the rest of him. He managed a dusty croak, and nothing else.

"It's him!" the second man called excitedly. "Holy shit, there's all kinds of guns in here."

The man with the gun smiled. It was not a nice smile. "El Mariachi."

El blinked. That was not his name. He had a name. If he could remember it, he would tell it to this man.

"How funny, that we should come upon you this way. My cousin was returning home from a routine trip to the fields, when he saw you lying here beside the road. He came and got me, and now here we are." The man grinned, showing a flash of very white teeth. "So much time and effort wasted. If only we had known you would come to us. We only needed to be patient."

The second man shut the guitar case. "I'll put this in the trunk, sí?"

The first man nodded. He had a thin mustache that curled above his upper lip like a calligraphy swirl. "Do that, Ramon."

El stared at the gun in the man's hand. His head was throbbing, and he felt sick to his stomach. He hoped he would die cleanly, and not slowly bleed to death while the buzzards circled overhead, waiting to pluck his eyes out.

A short, soundless laugh escaped him. It really was kind of funny. He and Sands would have a lot more in common, in just a few hours.

The man with the curling mustache smiled again. "Something is funny?"

El nodded and wheezed.

"I am glad you think so," the man said.

Cousin Ramon came back. The man with the gun said, "Tie his hands." To El he said, "Do not move. I have waited a long time for you, and I have no desire to blow your head off now, but I will do it, if you give me no choice."

El went very still.

Ramon knelt beside him. "Roll over."

He tried to obey, but his body was too heavy. In the end Ramon shoved him onto his side and then onto his stomach. His hands were yanked behind him and tied with thin twine that cut into his wrists. "It's tight," Ramon said. "He won't be getting loose."

"Good," said the man with the mustache. "Get him up."

Ramon had to tug and haul on him to get him upright. El did not fight, but he did not help, either. He didn't think he could, anyway. His limbs felt loose and quivery, and his head throbbed with rotten pain.

When he was on his feet, he swayed. Ramon caught him and kept him standing. It took several tries to get his voice working. "You're not going to kill me?"

"All in good time," said the man with the mustache. He smiled thinly.

"What are you going to do with me?" he asked. Not that he had any doubts. He just wanted to hear the man say it out loud.

"You owe me and my people a large debt," said the man. "It will be quite some time before it is paid in full." He smiled again.

El nodded.

Ramon walked him toward a white pickup truck. His hands were already going numb from being tied so tight. "There's a lot of people going to be happy to see you," Ramon whispered in his ear.

There was a time when he would have thrown his head back, breaking Ramon's nose. He would have made a bid for freedom. Today he did nothing. He was empty inside of all desires. Sick red heat throbbed in his head. He let Ramon walk him forward, and he did nothing about it.

He heard the rustling behind him, and he tensed, but he did nothing to stop the blow. The gun butt fell on the back of his head, and his knees came unhinged. He collapsed to the dirt.

The last thing he saw was Carolina. She was staring gravely at him, and her dress was fluttering in the wind. There were no flowers in her hair.

****

This time when he regained consciousness there were many men staring at him. Their eyes shone with greed. Several of them fingered the rifles they held in an obscenely romantic manner. El's stomach turned over, and for a horrible moment he thought he was going to be sick all over himself.

It was still dark out, but the hacienda was well lit. The white pickup truck had pulled into the middle of the courtyard. He was on stage again, but this time he didn't know his lines.

Ramon had been riding in the back with him. Now he stood up and with a well-placed kick between his shoulder blades, he knocked El out of the truck and onto the dirt.

Some of the men laughed. Most shifted uneasily.

The man with the mustache got out of the truck. He walked around it and looked down at El. "Welcome to my home," he said.

El groaned and struggled up onto his knees. He wanted to stand, but he didn't think he could. Nor did he think they would let him. They wanted to see him kneel.

"Yes, my home," said the man with the mustache. "I trust by now you know who I am."

El nodded. This was Carlos Alvarado, leader of the cartel that had Culiacan in its grip.

Alvarado favored him with a thin smile. Then he turned to face his men. "Practice patience, I told you. Some of you scoffed. Some of you disbelieved. Like you, Pablo." With unbelievable speed, he pulled his gun and shot a man standing near the pickup's headlights. The man clutched at his chest and crumpled to the ground.

"Some of you," said Carlos Alvarado, "were thinking to betray me."

The men stood up straighter now. A few began to sweat.

"But I have delivered for you!" Alvarado said loudly. He gestured with his hands as he spoke, and whenever the barrel of the gun was pointed at a man in the crowd, that man would blanch and cringe back.

"Here he is," said the leader of the cartel. He walked up to El and grabbed a handful of El's hair, holding El's face up for all to see. "The great El Mariachi."

A respectful silence fell over the courtyard. El was not sure if it was aimed at Alvarado, or at him.

"And let me say it now, so everyone can hear," Alvarado said. "So no one can use the excuse--" his voice changed now, climbing into higher registers, "that nobody told me!" He sneered at the men standing in the courtyard, and let go of El's hair. "This man belongs to me. I have bought and paid for him in blood. No one lays a finger on him that I don't know it.

"But," Alvarado held up a finger, although no one had even pretended to speak out and interrupt him. "There is a debt to be paid, and you can be sure that I will receive everything that is coming to me."

He turned to look at El, and he smiled.

And El, who had been drifting on the surface of life for so long he barely remembered what it was to feel again, shuddered at the sight of that smile.

******


	15. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Disclaimer: Not mine. 

Rating: PG-13 for violence and language

Summary: Sands is learning what it's like to be human. But what will he do when he finds out what has happened to El?

Author's Note: I have a phone and Internet again! Hooray! Now I can get back to a regular updating schedule. Please note this chapter is being posted without the help of my wonderful beta reader Melody, because I feel so bad about making you all wait so long for an update. So if you find any errors, they are entirely my fault.

****

Sands was pissed. He had gone to a lot of trouble to arrange this gunfight, and only two guys had showed up.

He knew what that meant. They weren't there to kill him. They were there to check him out, and see if the rumors were really true. Then they were supposed to report back to their boss. Then Carlos Alvarado would make plans, and the _next_ time they met, it would be for real.

This, then, was his cue to act pale and tired. Shuffle as he walked, cough a little. Make them think he was less of a threat than he was. But he had never been one to play by the rules.

He was kneeling in the second pew, in front of the confessional booth. He had been in Culiacan for just over a month now, and for the past two weeks he had been coming regularly to confession. Today the priest was prudently nowhere in sight, but the men standing just inside the church didn't know that.

He remembered the church well. He remembered donning a priest's robe and chasuble over his clothing, giggling as he arranged the purple cloth oh-so-carefully. And El Mariachi had never even known. When he had walked out of the confessional booth, the last thing El had said to him was, "Padre?" He still laughed to think about it.  
  
He rested his clasped hands on the back of the pew in front of him. He bowed his head and let his shoulders shake. Was he laughing? Crying? From the back it was hard to tell. Predictably, the two men came forward a little.

Concealed in his hands was a .22 pistol.

He stood up. He moved out into the aisle, genuflected before the altar and crossed himself. Behind him, the men went very still. It was too little, too late, however. He had heard their footsteps quite clearly; he knew exactly where they were.

He spun around and fired twice.

The men dropped. No guns clattered to the floor. They had stood there watching him for fifteen minutes, and they had not even drawn a gun. His lip curled. Pathetic.

****

After pulling the weeds in Jorge's yard, Sands had slept for twenty-four hours. He would have slept longer, but Jorge had woken him. The FBI agent had shaken his shoulder and called his name until he had grudgingly acknowledged that he was no longer asleep. He had mumbled something fuzzy and indignant, and Jorge had said, "You were still for so long. I thought something might be wrong."

He had promptly fallen asleep again, but later he had remembered those words. No, nothing was wrong. In fact, the past month had been arguably the most pleasant one Sands had ever known. He had slept for an entire day because he felt safe here, safe enough to lower his defenses and let the fear and exhaustion of four years finally catch up to him.

During the first week he slept a lot. He sat on the porch with Jorge and they talked about things like the weather and Broadway shows they had seen (Sands, six. Jorge, one.) Jorge told him about the cartel and he listened carefully. He had been running on empty all those weeks he had been with El, but now he had found his strength again. The cartel had to be eliminated in this area, or everything he had here would be taken away.

So he began to prepare. He made Jorge walk into town and count the steps. Then he did it himself, early the next morning before dawn. It was important that no one connect his presence to Jorge. Or the kid. Chiclet was an invaluable source of information during those days. He went anywhere and everywhere, and he hurried to do whatever the adults told him to do. And he never complained. 

Sands began showing up for confession. Not confess his sins, although there were plenty to confess. On the fourth visit he told the priest his plan. The old man hugged him and blessed him. He bore the embrace stoically but when the priest blessed him, he couldn't help laughing. "Save your breath, padre."  


At night he sat outside, smoking under the stars. He knew he should leave, just pack up his few belongings and sneak away, but he could not bring himself to do it. Always two things kept him there.

The first was Jorge saying, "I thought something was wrong." Jorge had been worried about him.

The second was Chiclet saying, "I'm sorry for what they did to you."

He could sneer at himself all he wanted, and he could call them weak for caring and himself weaker for caring that they cared, but in the end he could not lie to himself. It was somethng he had never been able to do. He made his living by telling lies, but he had always been honest with himself. And the truth was that he liked it here.

So he stayed.

And now, the church. He had come here loaded to the gills, guns stashed and hidden in several places throughout the building. Warned in advance, the priest had quietly canceled confession services, so no one would be in the church when the shit hit the fan. But after all that planning, only two men had showed up, and now they were both dead.

Well, he supposed when those two guys didn't come back, Carlos Alvarado would have his answer. Yes, the blind gunfighter was in town, and oh yeah, he meant business.

He started to collect his guns from where he had hidden them, and then stopped. One of the men had groaned. Still alive.

Swiftly he ran down the aisle, using one hand to count off the pews. In the other hand he held out the .22. "Don't even think it." Keeping the gun aimed at the man, he knelt down and removed the man's weapon. "You should have used it when you had the chance."

The man groaned again. "Fuck you."

Sands smiled. "Not today, thank you." His finger tightened on the trigger.

"It doesn't matter," the man panted. "We'll get you. Sooner or later. You guys thought you could hide forever, but we got him and we'll get you next."

Him? Who him? For a moment fear grabbed his heart, unwanted and very unwelcome. So they had discovered his connection to Jorge after all. Shit.

The man groaned again. The smell of blood was very strong. Sands leaned down. "What did you do to him?"

"The same thing we're going to do to you," the man said. He tried to laugh. "By the time we're done with you, you'll be begging us to give you to the Colombians. Just like your buddy."

Now he was really confused. What did the Colombians want with Jorge Ramirez?

And then suddenly he knew. This man wasn't talking about Jorge. The man was talking about El. The cartel headed by Carlos Alvarado had finally succeeded in capturing the great El Mariachi.

Wait a second. El was begging? _El_ was begging? Now he had heard it all.

"Where is he?" he asked. He jammed the muzzle of the gun under the man's chin. "You can die slow, or you can tell me what I want to know, and you can die quick. What's it gonna be?"

"I don't know," the man said.

Sands shot him in the arm. Not a fatal wound, but a painful one. The man screeched. "I don't know! Honest! They don't tell us." He was practically sobbing

"You really do want to do this hard way, don't you?" Sands mused. He pressed the gun to the man's other arm.

"No! I don't know!" the man screamed. "Alvarado doesn't tell us shit! They took him someplace so no one would decide to turn him in and take the reward for themselves. The Colombians are supposed to be here next week. That's all I know. I swear it." The man's voice was fading. He was dying from blood loss. Time was running out to get answers from him.

"They took him someplace," Sands repeated. "Someplace where?"

"Please, I don't know," the man said. "But I think--"

"You think? Really?" Sands asked. "Because you sure don't act like it."

"Somewhere in town," the man said. "Alvarado's been coming here a lot lately."

This gave Sands a nasty jolt. Carlos Alvarado was here in town? A lot? Shit, he could have passed the man on the street and never even known it. That was not good, not good at all. He was supposed to be the one arranging the meetings. He was supposed to be the one with all the information and all the advantages. It made him very uneasy to think of something like an encounter with the cartel boss being out of his hands.

Then something occurred to him. "If you don't know where he is, how do you know that he's been begging?"

"We hear stories," the man said faintly. "They say he screams real good." He was almost unconscious.

Sands shot him in the head. The man's heels drummed on the ground briefly, then he went still.

He stood up. Well, shit. Now what did he do?

**** 

Pressed hard enough, Jorge admitted that Carlos Alvarado had been seen in town. Sands was furious. But he didn't yell. He never yelled when he was angry. Instead, he talked softly. "And you didn't think that was important enough to tell me?"

It was late morning, not quite lunchtime. They were sitting in the living room. A mindless talk show was droning away on the TV. Jorge had been watching TV while waiting for him to come back from the church.

"I thought it was important," Jorge said.

"So important you hurried to tell me. Making especially sure that I knew it_ before_ I went off to face them," Sands offered. He finished rolling a cigarette and brushed the leftover tobacco off his lap and onto the floor. He knew Jorge hated it when he did that.

"Important enough to wait," Jorge said, "until I was sure."

"Sure of what?" Sands asked. He was still pissed, but getting less so. Jorge always had a reason for doing what he did, so he was willing to hear the man out.

"Sure of his intentions. He could have been baiting you."

So that was it. "Why, Jorge, I didn't know you cared so much," he simpered.

Ramirez said nothing to this, but the temperature in the room suddenly dropped ten degrees, and Sands knew he had just made a mistake.

He backpedaled rapidly. Maybe Ramirez was only pretending to care, but it was still nice. Nice, but strange. It was still hard to get used to though – the concept that someone might care.

"Well, of course you care," he said. "But why should you?" He lit the cigarette and smiled. "I'm a big boy. I can handle myself."

Ramirez said nothing.

"Oh, by the way," he said, "I heard something today that might interest you.

"And what might that be?" Ramirez asked. He sounded very bored. And was it his imagination or was the volume on the TV louder?

"Did you know that Carlos Alvarado and his cartel have captured El Mariachi?" Sands said. He tried, really he did, but he could not prevent himself from breaking out into a smile.

"And where did you hear that?" Ramirez asked. He sounded a lot more interested now.

"Well it was a very boring party at the church," Sands said. "Only two guests showed up. One of them had to leave right away, but the other one and I had quite a fascinating talk."

"He told you that?" Now Ramirez sounded disgusted. "And you believed it? He probably said that so you would go charging in and rescue the mariachi." His voice went flat. "They're setting a trap for you."

Sands laughed. It was hard to remember sometimes that not everyone was as good at figuring people out as he was. He had been living here for a month, and Jorge still did not know him at all.

"Why is that funny?" Ramirez demanded. Now he was using his "I'm-officially-not-liking-this" voice. It was the same voice that had said, _Why are we talking?_ at that long-ago lunch when Sands had dangled Dr. Guevara in front of the FBI agent like a golden plum.

He exhaled twin streams of smoke. "Do you _really_ think I'm going to rescue the great El Mariachi?"

Ramirez was silent for a long moment. Then he said. "Why wouldn't you?"

Sands truly thought about his answer before replying. This too was something new he was learning. Thoughtless words still sprang easily to his lips, but being around the kid had begun to make him see the wisdom of pausing before he spoke. Chiclet was surprisingly sensitive; Sands never knew when something he said would upset the kid. And when the kid got upset, there were tears and accusations and the necessary empty motions of comforting, and annoyingly enough, guilt. All in all, Sands had decided it was better not to upset the kid; the momentary pleasure he derived from getting off a zinger just wasn't worth the resulting emotional bloodbath.

So he thought about it. What reasons were there for rescuing El?

He shrugged. "I'm coming up empty, Jorge." Another one of those completely inappropriate smiles crossed his face. He didn't try too hard to stop this one.

"Then let me help you," Jorge said. "Carlos Alvarado is a sick man. He will torture the mariachi to death, and he will make that death as slow and painful as possible."

Sands thought about what the man in the church had said. Something about El begging. He found it hard to believe that El would debase himself like that, but then again, men would do a lot of strange things when they were being tortured. He ought to know.

He shifted in his chair. "All right. That's one reason. But the guy in the church said they were giving El to the Colombians, so they aren't going to torture him to death after all. Give me another reason."

"Whatever he's done," Jorge said, "he does not deserve what is happening to him. No man does."

"Don't you believe in justice?" Sands asked. He took a long drag on his cigarette. Not because he wanted to, but because he needed the extra time to compose himself. "An eye for an eye, for example?"

Ramirez did not answer right away. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, as though he was staring at the floor. "I thought you would ask me before this. No, I do not think you deserved what happened to you." He took a deep breath. "You are not a good person," Ramirez said. "But I do know you are not the same man who manipulated me into killing Barillo and Dr. Guevara."

Sands sat very still. He was torn between fury at Ramirez, and a desperate desire to hear more.

"I knew it right away," Ramirez continued. "In the church, when I saw you sitting there with a child at your side. You were willing to die rather than hurt that child. The Officer Sands I knew would not have done such a thing."

__

Don't be so quick to thank me, Jorge. You see, I'm not sure El really meant for me to kill that kid. I still don't know what the fuck happened that day, but I'm not sure it was supposed to end in murder.

"So I brought you here, and I have let you stay. You can call that justice, if you want."

He swallowed hard. "What do you call it?"

"Restitution," Jorge said dryly.

"For what?" Sands asked. He wondered suddenly what skeletons lay hidden in Jorge's closet. How many bodies.

Ramirez actually started to answer, and then he stopped talking. They both heard it. The clear sound of a bell.

Chiclet was here.

The kid's interruption could not have come at a worse time. Jorge had been about to spill his guts, and secrets were always useful. Sands was CIA – secrets were his livelihood. So he was annoyed that he would not get to hear those secrets. Instead they sat in silence, waiting for the kid to walk in. Chiclet was a welcome guest in Ramirez's house, and he came and went with impunity. He let himself in the front door now. 

Sands knew immediately that something wasn't right. Usually the kid chirped a greeting right as he walked in the door. But today the kid's step was slow, and there was no greeting at all.

"What's wrong?" Jorge asked.

"A man came to the house," Chiclet said dully. "He said someone would come by next week and give me my first order. They want me to start selling."

Sands clenched his jaw. It pissed him off to think of the cartel making the kid sell drugs. He was the only one who could give orders to Chiclet. No one else. Besides, the kid was too good to be out there on the streets selling crack.

"What did you say to this guy?" he asked. He spoke in Spanish. Chiclet understood English, but did not speak it very well.

"I said okay," Chiclet said. He sounded miserable, but there was a hint of accusation in his tone too. _What else could I say, asshole?_ he seemed to be saying.

Sands could dig it. "All right," he said. "Listen to me. You just nod and smile and do what they tell you. But you are not going to have to peddle their shit, you hear me?"

Chiclet brightened. "Are you going to kill them?"

Sands gave him a small smile. "Oh yeah."

"And El Mariachi?" asked Ramirez.

Crap. He'd forgotten about El. He sighed. "Sure, El too." He realized what he had just said, and quickly corrected himself. "Sure, I'll save him. Although I gotta tell you, Jorge, I really do fail to see the benefit. This is, after all, the man who held me hostage for three months and tried to make me kill the kid that is, in fact, standing right here in your living room."

"Why does he need saving?" asked Chiclet. He never spoke El Mariachi's name. Completely on his own one day he had volunteered the information that he still had nightmares about that day in the alley, hearing El give the order to have him killed. And just two days ago he had asked Sands to teach him how to shoot.

"Apparently," Sands said cheerfully, "because he is a dumbass who got himself captured by Carlos Alvarado." 

He expected Chiclet to say he was glad. Or at the least, say nothing. But the boy surprised him. "Then we need to help him."

Sands sighed. Sure, everybody wanted to help El. They all conveniently forgot the things El had done, and the fact that El had lost his mind. 

Ramirez said, "Have you seen or heard anything in town lately? They say he is here."

"No," Chiclet said. "But I can find out."

Sands did not doubt he would. If there was anything to be heard about El Mariachi's presence in town, Chiclet would hear it. Maybe it was the bicycle, or his disarming smile. Whatever the reason, the kid was amazingly good at ferreting out information. Once Sands had told him that he would have made one hell of a CIA officer, and the kid had been so delighted he had giggled.

"I'll go now," Chiclet said. He started toward the door.

Sands waited for Ramirez to say it, the thing Ramirez always said. But this time Ramirez did not, so it fell to him to say it, just as the kid went out the door.

"Be careful," he said.

**** 

Chiclet came back that night. In hindsight, his news was not terribly surprising, but Sands was still affected by it.

"He is here. I followed one of them. They are keeping him in the center of town. It is the same building where they hurt you, Señor Sands."

He was stupidly unprepared for the jolt that went through him. A flash of memory, sharp steel and red blood, and beyond, the face of the doctor. Stark terror overwhelming his rational brain. _no please don't no please i'll be good just please don't!_

"Sands!" Ramirez spoke his name sharply, forcing him back to the present. He realized he was sweating, trembling all over.

__

I can't, he thought. _No way. Tough break, El. But I'm not going back there. No way. No fucking way._

"Tell us about it," Jorge said. "How many men did you see? What is the security like?"

Chiclet talked. He had seen two men in front, he said. Probably more inside, but he hadn't gotten close enough to be sure. None in back but that meant nothing. A single light had burned in one window. Silence from within.

Hearing such dry details made Sands feel better. He liked to have something to think about besides the day he had been blinded. He had strategy to formulate now, and plans to lay. That was good. Keeping his mind occupied was good.

And then he suddenly realized what was happening. "Wait a minute." He turned to face Jorge. "You're really going to do this?"

"Yes," Jorge said simply. "You do not have to. I know it will be hard for you to go back there."

For a full minute Sands did not respond. He couldn't decide whether he should laugh or fly into a rage. He knew why Ramirez had said that – so he would get pissed and declare that he wasn't afraid, that he was going along and screw you, Jorge. But there was a fundamental flaw in that logic. Because he _was_ afraid, and he didn't want to go. And Ramirez's words, while meant to provoke him into going, also gave him an out. He could agree and say he really wanted to sit this one out and there would be no loss of face.

Well, no more than he had already lost, that was.

His pride warred with the fear of going back. If he didn't go, Ramirez would not rub it in his face, but he would never be allowed to forget. Chiclet would not think so highly of him, and even though it was stupid, he cared what the kid thought. He wanted Chiclet to respect him.

Why, oh why did it have to be El? Why couldn't it have been Jorge, or the kid? Anyone besides El Mariachi. It would be so much easier to make this decision if he had a clearer motivation for making it.

"All right?" Jorge was saying. "You understand?"

"Yes," Chiclet said. He sounded disappointed. Jorge must have told him to stay away from the building and not get involved.

__

He wanted me to kill you, kid. Why do you want to help him so badly?

But he knew the reason why. Chiclet was a good person. And he was not. Jorge had told him as much, but it was nothing he didn't already know. He was psychotic and an asshole. Pure and simple.

He lifted his chin. "All right. I'm in," he said.

*****

Author's Note: I always wondered whether El realized Sands was the priest. But listening to Robert Rodriguez's commentary on the DVD, it became clear that the two sides of that scene were shot separately and that someone else was supposed to play the priest, not Johnny. So rather than ruin the simplicity of El's final words to Sands, I thought I would make it that El just never realized that was Sands. After all, they had only met once before, and it was dark, so El can be forgiven for not knowing who he was talking to.


	16. The Best Laid Plans

The Best Laid Plans

Disclaimer: I do not own Sands or El or Ramirez. Just a twisted imagination, and a brand new house.

Rating: R for violence and language

Summary: Sands and Ramirez attempt to rescue El Mariachi from the cartel

Author's Note: I know very little about the geography of Mexico, so forgive any inaccuracies.

The title of this chapter is a quote from a poem by Robert Burns. "The best laid plans, of mice and men, gang oft aglay." Meaning, they often go astray. In other words, things aren't going to go so well for our heroes…

Many thanks to my beta reader Melody, for finding plotholes and errors for me. You're the best, girl. 

Last, I don't know why, but the formatting in this chapter is screwy...my usual **** to change scenes has been replaced with a solid line. Gee thanks, ff.net.

* * *

"All right. I'm in," he said.

* * *

Long after Jorge had gone to bed, Sands sat up. He needed to do some thinking. The night breeze was cooler than usual, and it was lightly raining. Every now and then a stronger wind would kick some rain onto the porch, and Sands would flinch when the drops struck him, and then force his wayward mind back on track.

First and foremost came the question of why he had agreed to help. Why he was willing to rescue El Mariachi from the cartel.

He hated El Mariachi. El had used him, where no one else had ever succeeded. El had turned him into a slave, and a puppet forced to obey the whims of a crazy mariachi. El had tried to make him kill a kid. As far as he was concerned, El deserved whatever he got, for being stupid enough to get caught, and for being such an asshole.

So why did he care? Why had he agreed to do this?

He shifted in his chair. He wanted a cigarette. Badly. But he denied the urge. He needed a clear head right now.

So, okay, he would grant that being tortured at the hands of a cartel was not a fate to be wished on anyone. Even El did not deserve that.

__

Even I didn't deserve it.

But did that mean he was compelled to rescue El? Was he expected to put aside years of animosity and just, well, just _forgive_ the mariachi?

Why, the answer to that was a big "Hell no." There could be no forgiving. No forgetting. No live and let live.

However…

If he saved El from the clutches of the cartel, El would owe him, and owe him big. He could use that leverage to get what he wanted from the mariachi. He didn't delude himself into believing that he could use El as El had used him. El would not become his puppet. And in truth there was nothing El had that he wanted. But maybe he could use this as his Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. He could tell El that this was it. El would have to go away, far away, and never interfere with him again. If he ever even suspected El was near, the mariachi was dead. End of story. No second chances, no let-me-explain. Just a bullet between the eyes.

Yes, that could work. Even now, depraved as he had become, the mariachi still had a twisted sense of honor. If he saved El's life, El would acknowledge the debt that lay between them. El would leave him alone, if that was what he said he wanted.

He stood up and went inside. He was done thinking. Because there was nothing left to think about. He had found a reason to help El, and resolved his doubts. And that was it. There was nothing left to worry about. He was not frightened of what lay ahead, or where he had to go. 

Not frightened at all.

* * *

Morning came. A tropical storm was churning off the western coast of Mexico, and heavy rains were forecast all day. Jorge had wanted to postpone the rescue, but Sands had argued until Jorge caved in. It had to be today. The rain would keep most people inside and make El's guards more relaxed. They would not suspect anything today.

Just like every morning, Sands and Ramirez sat in the kitchen, drinking their morning coffee. But there was something palpable in the air today, and Sands could feel an indefinable tension tightening his muscles and honing his remaining senses. He had to fight the urge to give in to a shit-eating grin. Oh yeah, something was going down today. And he was ready.

Around seven, Jorge drove him toward town. He got out of the car with half a mile still to go, and walked the rest of the way. Jorge was not due in town until noon, when they would meet for lunch. Until then, his time was his own.

Walking in the rain was very isolating. Occasionally thunder rumbled in the distance, but mostly there was just the sound of rain hitting the pavement and drumming on the curved arc of the umbrella over his head. Sands had known a guy at Langley who had sworn that real men didn't carry umbrellas, but he had always scoffed at that idiot. Fuck being macho. He wasn't getting wet unless he had to.

Traffic was light in town. He had the streets to himself, almost. This area of Culiacan was hilly, and there was a danger of mudslides. Nobody wanted to be out driving today, especially on the roads that led out west toward Ramirez's house, and further, to the coast.

He decided to go to the church. It was always nice and cool there, and after yesterday's killing, nobody would expect him to return. He would be safe there. As he splashed up the steps, he wondered with wry amusement if the church would be closed due to the weather, but the door opened easily beneath his hand, and he slipped inside.

The sound of the rain was dulled in the church. He could still smell blood, but the scent was faint; the cleaning ladies had obviously done a good job of getting it up. He wondered if the priest was pissed off at him because of the carnage. Well, he had warned the man, and that had to count for something, right? Besides, if the priest gave him any trouble, he would just remind the man about the old saying, the one about breaking eggs to make an omelet. And if that didn't work, there were always his guns.

But nobody bothered him. Not the priest, not anyone. He had the place to himself, it seemed. He spent several hours sitting in the dim sanctity of the church. At ten minutes to twelve, his watch beeped to let him know it was time to go. He rose to his feet and walked out of the church. Immediately the rain assaulted him, bowing his head and making him curse. The umbrella was next to useless. Before he had even crossed the street, he was soaked through.

Jorge had taken a seat inside the café, instead of the usual outdoors table he favored. He had already ordered their meal. Sands sat across from the former FBI agent and wrung water from his shirt. It pattered onto the floor by his feet, forming a puddle. 

Thankfully Jorge was not one of those people who felt obliged to ask if it was wet enough for you. He simply said, "Are we still on?"

Sands grinned at him. "Jorge, baby, it's time for the fat lady to sing."

* * *

Over lunch they talked about the plan. It was simple enough. Create a disturbance that would bring the guards to the door, and kill them. Get inside. Kill whoever moved. Find El. Leave building with mariachi safely in tow.

Apparently this morning Chiclet had gone to Ramirez's house with some more information. There were at least four men inside, he had said. He knew this because he had done the very brave and very stupid act of knocking on the front door. When two of the men had opened the door, he had feigned embarrassment and alarm, stumbling over an excuse of looking for a buyer for his gum. While he had stood there, he had seen two more men in the windows looking out onto the street.

"He's an idiot," Sands said sharply. "He shouldn't have done that."

"He wanted to help," Jorge said. He didn't sound terribly concerned.

"Yeah, and you didn't stop him," Sands said. "But you'd feel plenty guilty if he got his brains splattered all over the pavement."

After a pause, Jorge said, "Would you?"

"Hell no," Sands said. "I didn't put him up to this."

But then he had to stop, because that wasn't entirely true. If he was honest with himself, he had to admit that he would regret it if the kid died. Especially if the kid died as part of some hare-brained scheme to rescue El Mariachi.

The waitress came back to their table. "Is everything all right, señor?" she asked. "You have hardly touched your food."

Sands pushed the plate away. He wasn't feeling very hungry, all of a sudden.

* * *

Things started out okay. Hell, they started out better than okay. They started out just perfect, thank you very much.

Jorge lit a firecracker – compliments of Chiclet – and tossed it onto the doorstep of the building where El was being held prisoner and where a butcher named Guevara had once ripped Sands' eyes out. Sands stood to one side of the door while this was happening, hoping the pounding rain would not put out the firecracker.

It did not. The firework exploded, and after a few moments, the door was flung open. Two men emerged, heavy workboots clomping on the stone. Sands took one step forward and shot both of them.

After that it got a bit dicey.

To start with, the inside of the house was very quiet. At first. Sands had only taken a single step forward when the air was suddenly split in two by the sound of someone screaming.

Ramirez swore in Spanish, his voice a bit shaky. Sands just shook his head. It helped to hear someone else's pain. He had been afraid he would step inside this place and hear the ghostly echo of his own screams.

It was bad enough, just being back here. He had to work hard to regulate his breathing. His hands were loose and shaky as they held his guns. He wondered morbidly what had ever happened to his eyes. Maybe Barillo had ordered them placed in a jar as a keepsake. Or maybe they were still here, lost somewhere in this building, crying out for him to find them and take them home.

He shuddered.

"All right?" Jorge asked.

"Shut up," he hissed back. He could do this. He was fine. Just fine and dandy. He forced his hands to stop shaking, and girpped his guns tightly. "Let's go."

They made their way through the building, killing as they went. With every shot the silencers screwed onto the muzzles of their guns became more useless, but that did not matter. Soon there would be no one left to hear the shots, anyway. 

El was upstairs, in a back room. Before they even reached the door, Sands knew what was making El scream like that. He could smell the acrid tang of electricity in the air.

He nodded to himself. It wasn't too surprising. Electricity hurt like hell. But it left few marks behind. As such it was the perfect torture device.

That was one bit of information Sands knew from firsthand experience. At Langley, each member of his class had been shocked, so they would know what to expect should they ever be captured and tortured by the faceless enemy. The instructor had shocked them until they had screamed, and half the class had been so frightened they had begun screaming before the first wave of current could even begin to pass through their body.

Sands, of course, had been determined to outlast the instructor. And of course he hadn't. But he had held out longer than most. It had taken two of them to lift him from the chair, because his limbs hadn't wanted to cooperate and obey his brain's commands. 

He had never forgotten that day. And right now someone had El Mariachi strapped to a car battery or something, only instead of being let out of the chair when he screamed, the torture kept right on coming.

Well, it was time to end the fun and games. It was a pity Jorge didn't have any bombs. It would have been nice if he could have exploded this place when he was quit of it. Blow it up so no one else could be brought here and tortured. And so he wouldn't dream about what had happened here anymore.

"Keep out of sight," he said.

"Just make sure you don't kill the mariachi," Jorge said dryly.

"Don't tempt me," Sands said, and kicked in the door.

The mariachi abruptly went silent as a switch was thrown. A deep voice said, "Who the fuck are you?"

"I'm your fairy godmother," Sands said, and shot him four times.

The man fell to the floor. The only sound in the room was El Mariachi's harsh breathing. Sands holstered his guns and grinned. "Surprised to see me?"

* * *

With Jorge's help, he got El out of the chair. The mariachi managed a raspy, "How?" and then all he did was groan.

"Oh, I have my sources," Sands said brightly. "I'm still staying abreast of current events and all, you know."

El could barely walk. Sands and Ramirez had to support him between them. There was a pained note to his breathing, and as they made their slow way down the steps, he groaned loudly.

"Jeez, would you stop being such a baby?" Sands complained. 

El said nothing. Jorge too was silent, which vaguely surprised Sands. He had expected a reprimand for being an asshole.

Outside, the rain was coming down even harder, if that was possible. El slipped and stumbled in the wet, dragging Jorge down with him. Sands managed to stay on his feet, although he was bent over and to the left. El's arm about his shoulders weighed a ton. "Christ," he panted. "What have they been feeding you in there?"

This time Jorge spoke up. "That's enough," he snapped.

Sands bit his lip to keep from smiling.

They walked through the rain. Jorge had parked his car a block away, so they could make a quick getaway, yet not so close that the car would be seen by the men in the building. It had seemed like a good idea when they had been making plans, but now Sands cursed their stupidity. They should have parked right across the street. Hell, they should have driven the car right into the front door. That would have made a fine diversion, and it would have made the last leg of their escape that much quicker.

Thunder boomed overhead. El started in fright. "What...?" he whispered.

Sands frowned. If El didn't realize they were in the middle of a thunderstorm, either the mariachi was more messed up than he thought, or... "Hey, El, they didn't take your eyes too, did they?"

"I can see," El said wearily. He tried to walk under his own power and succeeded for about two steps before his legs gave out again.

"Oh well, that's good," Sands said brightly. "Good for you."

"Here," Jorge said. "It's here." With his free hand he fumbled for his car keys. They jingled merrily in the storm.

They stopped in front of the car. Sands gave his head a shake, tossing the wet hair off his face. In weather like this his sunglasses were useless. He thought with some envy of Belini and the eyepatch the man had worn. He could use one of those right now. Or two.

Jorge opened the back door. "Get in."

They helped El into the back seat. The mariachi groaned again as he sank onto the upholstery. Sands frowned, then got in beside him.

"What are you doing?" El asked weakly.

"Hell if I know," Sands said as he shut the car door. Rain washed down the window, a strangely comforting sound. "I should be riding shotgun."

"Then why aren't you?" El asked, as Jorge got inside and started the car.

Sands ignored this. "How hurt are you? What did they do to you?" He remembered the man in the church saying that El had been begging for death. He had thought that was an exaggeration, but listening to the pain in El's voice, he began to wonder.

"I will be fine," El said.

The car pulled away from the curb. "You need a doctor," Jorge said from the front seat, "if you wish to use that hand again."

"What?" Before El could stop him, he reached out and grabbed the mariachi's hands.

El stiffened and tried to pull away, but Sands held on tight. He knew he was hurting El, but he hardly cared. He was too shocked.

"Jesus," he breathed.

He thought back to the first time he had met El Mariachi. The man had been hunched over a rough-hewn guitar, picking thoughtlessly at the strings. Yet the tune he had produced had been pleasing and in harmony. Music had flowed from his fingers without effort, as natural as breathing.

He doubted El would ever play guitar again. They had burned the mariachi's right hand. Badly.

Well, sure. The cartel had fully expected El to be dead once he was in the custody of the Colombians. They would not worry about causing him permanent injury. It would not even be surprising to discover a few vital pieces of El's body missing, Sands mused. After all, a cartel that would rip someone's eyes out surely would not scruple to remove anything else from a person.

He let go of El's hands. Thunder crashed overhead. The car accelerated. "I think we're being followed," Jorge said.

And wasn't it funny, how even after all this time, some habits just never died? Instinctively Sands started to turn around, so he could see who was behind them. The moment he realized what he was doing he clamped down on himself, hard. He was furious with his lapse. He lived in darkness now, and it was not often that he made mistakes like the one he had almost just made. He hoped nobody else had seen it. Since he had barely begun to move before stopping, hopefully they would only think he had been shifting in his seat.

"Can you lose them?" he asked.

"Sure," Jorge said casually. Then a bit louder he said, "Would you bandage his wrists?"

"What?" He frowned. "Is he bleeding?" Of course he knew El was; he had felt the blood on the mariachi's wrists when they had untied him from the chair.  


"Yes," Jorge said. "And I would prefer he not do it all over my car."

"Gotcha," Sands said. He took a perverse pleasure in talking about El as if the mariachi was not sitting right there beside him.

He reached for his back pocket and withdrew a sodden bandanna. Only one, though. That was all he had. "Which one is worse?" he asked, holding out a hand.

"Here." El placed a loose fist in his palm.

He shifted his grip and found the raw, bleeding skin of El's right wrist. Without a word he tied the bandanna tightly about the limb. El flinched as he knotted it, but did not make a sound.

"Oh shit!" Jorge suddenly exclaimed. The car jolted forward, and Sands was flung around in his seat. El went for a similar ride, and groaned in pain.

Shots suddenly rang out, muffled by the storm, but still distinct. The back window shattered in a spray of glass and rain. Sands threw himself to the floor of the backseat, and he heard the sounds of El doing the same.

"Where did they come from?" he shouted. He drew his guns and sprang upright, firing wildly through the gaping hole where the window had been. Then he dropped back down, cursing the blindness that left him at such a disadvantage. 

"I don't know!" Jorge shouted back. "They must have been just arriving as we left. They saw us."

"Is it Alvarado?" he called.

"I don't know," Jorge said.

"Shit," Sands hissed under his breath. He turned toward El. "I ought to open the door and just dump you out. Think if I did that, the cartel would give me the reward?"

El said nothing. Maybe he was paralyzed by fear of being captured again. Or maybe he was unconscious.

Shots plowed into the car again. Jorge swore loudly. The car jerked from side to side. More glass exploded from the back window.

Sands gripped his guns hard enough to cramp his wrists, and listened for the pause in the firing that would mean the shooter had stopped to reload.

Tires squealing, the car skidded around a curve. The turn was very sharp, and Sands recognized it from the way his body swayed. He realized they were on the road heading west, toward Jorge's house. "What are you doing?" he shouted. It was never good to lead the bad guys back to your home base.

"Give me a gun," El said. He sounded like he was about to faint.

"Yeah, right," Sands said. He popped up and fired twice out the window. That was all he dared. He sank back to the floor.

Thunder boomed overhead. And then another roar sounded. This one was much closer.

"Shit!" Jorge yelled. The car slewed violently to the right as he fought to regain control against the pull of the blown-out tire.

"Come on!" Sands shouted. But he didn't know if he was yelling at Jorge, the tire, or the world in general.

The car veered even further to the right. Jorge cried out, and then something slammed into them from behind.

Sands was thrown into the back of the passenger seat. He heard El cry out in pain, and the stupid jingle of the chains on the mariachi's pants.

The car struck them from behind again.

And then they were flying. At least, that was what it felt like.

The right wheels left the road first. For a little bit they continued on, only half on the road. Then the car hit something on the front end. Glass shattered. Metal crumpled. Sands found himself in the front seat and could not think how that had happened.

That was when they started flying. 

Not up, up and away. But down.

All the way down.

* * *


	17. The Walking Wounded

The Walking Wounded

Disclaimer: El and Sands are probably quite glad they don't belong to me.

Rating: R for violence and language

Summary: What happens after the accident. This is a long chapter. That's because it was originally two shorter chapters, but I decided to combine them into a single long one, so the action would not get broken up.

Author's Note: To everyone who asked how I was going to get El and Sands back together…you'll be sorry you asked. eg

As an aside, I know very little about mudslides, but every time I see footage of them on TV, they scare me to death… 

Last, many hugs to Melody. For beta reading, and for offering the theory that El poses to Sands later, about dreams. I don't know who originally thought of this idea, but I think it's very cool, so I wanted to use it. 

****

Maybe, El thought faintly, this was the end of the world. The Apocalypse he had been taught about as a child. All the signs were there. Fire. Flood. And the most telling sign of all: a man who hated him had saved his life.

He lay on his back, blinking up into the rain. He had to turn his head to the side so he could see. It hurt when he moved his head, and he groaned a little.

He was at the bottom of a hill. Water flowed in thick muddy streams down the slope and dumped into a small river that was being born even as El stared dully at it. The water level of that river was rising fast. Mud and dirt were washing down the hill, splashing into the river, but not throttling it.

El tried to remember what had happened. His last truly clear memory was of sitting in the car, watching Sands bandage his bleeding wrist. After that, things had happened so fast, they existed in his memory only as still-frames, like photographs.

They had been pursued by the cartel. He knew that much. Possibly Carlos Alvarado himself, the man who had laughed when El had screamed in pain. Whoever they were, their pursuers had shot at them. Sands had returned fire. Ramirez had tried to outmaneuver them, but on the hilly roads west of Culiacan, there was not much room for such tactics.

One of their tires had been shot out. The pursuers' car had rammed them from behind.

And then, one image in his memory that was larger than all the others. A guardrail. Coming close. Too close.

The awful crunch of impact. Being thrown. Ramirez suddenly gone, out the windshield.

Sliding down the hill. Sands yelling.

And above, on the road, another crash. An explosion. Fireball blooming toward the sky.

And then nothing. Black. Unconsciousness.

El rolled onto his side and got his first good look at the aftermath of the crash.

Above, on the road, the car belonging to the cartel burned merrily in a tangle of metal and black smoke. Their pursuers had slammed right into them. The rain and the wet road had made it hard to stop, maybe. Or maybe Ramirez had hit the guardrail so suddenly, and they had been following so closely behind, that there had simply been no time for them to stop.

Directly ahead of him was the remains of Ramirez's car. It was crumpled on both ends, and only the side windows were still intact, although a crack zigzagged up the back passenger window. The entire front end was smashed in like an accordion.

A hand dangled in front of one shattered headlight. Sands lay on the hood of the car. He had been thrown through the windshield, but instead of coming free of the car, as El had, he had remained half inside the vehicle. It was fortunate for him that the car had not rolled as it had slid down the hill.

El groaned again. He hurt all over. His captors had not cared what bones they broke, or what damage they inflicted. His health had not been a high priority for them. All they had cared about was keeping him alive until they could turn him over to the Colombians for the reward. That, and hurting him.

He made a convulsive heave and managed to get up on his knees. Pain seized him, and he went absolutely still, riding it out, breathing through tightly clenched teeth. A long gash ran across his cheek, but the rain was washing away the blood. His right shoulder was on fire, and he knew without looking that the joint had come dislocated again. All the old injuries of his body had been re-awakened by the violence of the crash, and they cried out in pain, reminding him that they were still not healed.

It hurt to stay where he was. But kneeling was better than lying in the mud. The rising river was not so close to his face anymore.

He looked up at the hill. Mud was oozing downward at a faster rate, sliding into the water that churned at the base of the hill.

Abruptly it occurred to him that it was very dangerous to stay where he was. If the hill did not collapse first, the police would arrive on the scene soon. There would be an investigation of the accident. The six o'clock news would report it, and soon all of Mexico would know the great El Mariachi had been involved.

He wondered if Ramirez was alive. The FBI agent had gone through the windshield before the car had made its last ride down the hill. He only hoped Ramirez had not been a part of that fireball he had seen.

He tried to stand, and fell back, gasping. Every inch of him hurt. He had no idea how long he had been the cartel's prisoner, but he knew it had been at least three weeks. Maybe more. Long enough to lose track of time. Long enough for his body to weaken with pain and hunger.

Again he tried to rise, and this time, after an endless period where he had to stop and ride the pain out again, he made it. He stood there swaying, rain dripping from the ends of his hair and rolling off his nose. Thunder rumbled, but it was softer and in the distance.

He had to get out of here. There was no chance of scaling the hill in this weather, and not in his condition. So he would walk. He would follow the new river and see where it took him. Not back toward town, however. The opposite direction. He didn't know where the river would lead him, but he had faith that he would eventually reach civilization. This part of the state was well-populated; sooner or later he would find someone to help him.

He staggered forward, his boots splashing up water from the river that was steadily rising. Mud poured down the side of the hill in a steady stream. On the road above his head the fire in the car was beginning to burn out.

Just as he neared the car, Sands groaned and stirred. El looked at him, and suddenly saw the reason he had not been thrown clear of the car. A slender twist of metal had speared him through the leg just above the knee, keeping him attached to the car. It looked like it had once been the windshield wiper, maybe, but it was hard to tell.

Sands started to rise, and then suddenly froze. His face whitened in pain. He made a hoarse noise unlike anything El had ever heard from him before. "Jorge?"

He was facedown on the hood. He had lost his sunglasses. The empty hollows where his eyes had been seemed to stare bleakly into the rain. "Jorge?" He tried to reach down for his leg and could not bring himself to do it. "Jorge, are you there?" He swallowed hard. "El?  


El remained where he was, unmoving. At that particular moment he could not have moved even if he had wanted. He hurt too badly.

Sands took a deep breath and one inch at a time, slowly sat up. His wet hair hung in his face, and his jaw was clenched. He fingered a long cut on his neck, then with agonizing slowness he slid a trembling hand down his leg until he encountered the piece of metal. He drew his hand back with a hissing intake of breath.

In the west, lightning flashed. El's knees wanted to buckle, and he straightened them with a great effort.

He watched as Sands cautiously explored the metal, and the wounds where it entered his leg and then exited again. He was amazed by the courage Sands displayed. The man was blind and he believed himself to be alone, the sole survivor of a car crash he probably barely understood. Yet here he was, fighting for his life like always, refusing to surrender.

El was about to speak up, when the hill chose that moment to let loose a minor avalanche. Copious amounts of thick brown mud poured down the hill and slapped into Ramirez's car, rocking it back and forth. Atop the hood, Sands' head snapped up and he appeared to be listening hard, although there was nothing to hear except the steady drumbeat of rain and the oozing flow of mud. Quietly, but very clearly, he said, "Oh shit."

El braced himself against the flow of thick mud. It washed over his boots and covered his feet to the ankles. He swayed backward and silver pain shot through his shoulder, making him gasp.

Sands did not waste another second. He reached down and ripped the metal from his leg. Blood ran out onto the warped surface of the hood. He threw his head back and cried out.

El winced in sympathy. He tried to call out, and could only produce a froggy croaking noise.

More of the hillside tore free. Mud and rock tumbled downward. This time the car rocked severely, and was actually forced farther down the slope. El watched it coming toward him, and knew he should run, but he still could not move.

The force of the wave knocked him off his feet. He was thrown to his knees, and then borne down, helplessly flailing and shouting. The river that the rain and runoff had created drew closer, and then he was plunged underwater in a churning mass of brown mud and bleak water.

He kicked and struggled, fighting to stand up. The current carried him along for a little ways, but the river was not yet that deep. If he could get his feet under him, he would stand a chance.

Thick mud covered his feet and legs, bringing his motion down the river to a halt. He could not kick anymore. His head broke the surface, and he shouted, then he was dragged under again by the heavy weight of the mud.

Not too long ago he had lain down beside the graves of his wife and daughter, hoping to die. Now, faced with imminent death, El Mariachi fought it with every ounce of his strength. He no longer felt the pain of his battered body, or noticed that his right arm was useless. He fought with everything he had, and nothing else mattered except surviving.

He got his head above water. He tasted fresh air. He shouted, and then water flooded his mouth as he sank again.

He thrashed about, but the weight on his feet and legs was growing heavier as more mud slid into the river. And the water level was rising fast. His flailing hand barely skimmed the surface now.

There was no air. He couldn't breathe. Buzzing filled his head. Lights flashed in front of his eyes. With the last of his strength, he made one final effort to escape the clutches of his prison. He clawed at the water, as though he could somehow push it aside with his hand and create a space for him to breathe.

His desperate fingers touched something. He grabbed for it, and the something twisted under his grip and suddenly became a hand holding his left wrist. The hand pulled and his head broke free of the water. He coughed and gasped, breathing in great gulps of air.

The mud was reluctant to give him up. He felt like he was being torn in two, with the upper half of his body rising from the water, and the lower half sealed to the riverbed by an immovable weight. He wanted to kick and push with his feet, but he could not even feel them.

"Help me, damnit!" Sands shouted. "Swim!"

The pull on his arm was unbearable. In another moment his shoulder would separate and then he would have matching useless arms. Frantically El threw himself forward, trying to tear free of the sucking pull of the mud. To his immense relief, one foot came loose. Choking and gasping, he kicked as hard as he could.

And then he was there. He had made it. He collapsed onto the ground, feeling it shift and ooze beneath him. In alarm he looked up, but the current had carried him downstream. The sliding avalanche of mud was to his left now, and the ground here seemed stable enough, just soaked and puddled.

Sands lay up the slope, stretched flat on the mud. He had not let go of El's wrist. Every inch of him was covered in mud, but already the rain was washing the worst of it away. Without picking his head up, he mumbled, "You okay?"

El swallowed and grimaced. His throat hurt and the inside of his mouth was grimy. "Yes," he croaked.

Sands looked up. Confusion wrinkled his brow. "El?" He shook his head. "Oh hell. I thought you were Jorge."

El was too surprised and breathless to answer this right away. He didn't know if Sands was being serious or not. But if it was true, Sands had just inadvertently revealed a side of himself El had never even suspected existed. Despite his callous disregard for most human life, evidently Sands had become fond of Jorge Ramirez. Enough to worry about him. Enough to try to save his life.

"He is not here," El wheezed. He coughed and choked some more. Now that he was free of the river's grasp, he could feel the pain of his body again, and it paralyzed him. "He was thrown from the car before it slid down the hill."

"Jesus," Sands whispered. He rested his forehead on his outstretched arm.

He still had not let go of El's wrist. El decided that was because he probably didn't even feel the grip anymore, he was holding on so tight.

"We have to go," he sighed. At any moment the hill above their heads could decide to join its brother and dump itself into the river. And the police would arrive on the scene of the accident soon, and someone would see them down here. They had to flee, but at the moment El could not see how they would manage this.

"You know," Sands said, "in all the time I've known you, I think that's the first intelligent thing you've said." He let go of El's wrist and rolled onto his back. "However, you picked one hell of a time to grow a brain, El. I can't walk."

El turned his head and saw the trail in the mud. Most of it was already washing away in the rain, but he could still see it well enough to piece together what had happened. Sands had let himself drop from the car to the ground and then he had heard El's struggles in the river. He had crawled to the water and pulled El out, and now here they were, filthy, soaked to the skin, in danger of being spotted by the wrong people, and too hurt and exhausted to do anything about.

It was almost funny, when you thought about it.

"I will help you," he said, "if you help me."

Sands thought about it for a moment. Then he nodded. "All right."

****

Arms about each other's waists, they staggered away from the car and the river and the mudslide. El's right arm hung numbly at his side, and with every stride the natural pendulum motion in the limb set off fireworks of pain in his shoulder and burned hand. Sands limped heavily, his normal grace brought up short by pain. He was forced to lean on El with every step. El was none too steady on his feet himself, but he made himself keep walking.

__

What a pair we make, he thought.

The rain had not slackened at all. They worked their way along the base of the hills, heading in a northwesterly direction. The landscape here was craggy and pockmarked with ravines. El had hoped they could find a natural overhang where they could take shelter, but so far nothing seemed promising.

"I want you to know," Sands said, "that I voted against rescuing you. Now I know why. I should have listened to myself." His voice was taut with pain, and he spoke in breathless bursts of words, falling silent when he tried to put weight on his left leg.

"Why did you?" El asked. 

"You want me to take you back?" Sands snapped.

El shook his head. He had heard of prisoners who reported having only hazy memories of their captivity, but unfortunately that was not his experience. He remembered all too well what they had done to him.

His foot slipped in the mud and he stumbled, trying desperately to stay upright. If he fell, he would not get back up. "Whatever your reasons for doing it," he panted, "I am grateful you did."

"Well I'm glad you feel that way," Sands said. "Because that makes a nice little segue into the topic of debts, and who owes who."

El winced. Thunder rumbled in the west. He had behaved abominably toward Sands, and he knew it. But worse was what he had done to the young boy who had never asked to be trapped between two killers.

And as he staggered through the mud with his bitterest enemy by his side, he reflected that maybe a month of captivity and torment was what he had needed all along. The emptiness inside him had been filled up. He wasn't quite sure what was in the gaping hole that had taken over his soul, but there were definitely feelings in there.

"Did you hear me?" Sands demanded.

El nodded. "Sí."

"Good." Thunder whipcracked overhead, startling both of them. Sands flinched, and El's breath caught as his own body jolted in consequence. Oh God how he hurt!

"So this is what I want," Sands said. The hard edge was rapidly fading from his voice, making him sound more human. "I want you to leave me alone. Savvy?"

"Right now?" El couldn't resist asking.

"Fuck you," Sands said. "You know what I mean. When this is all over, I want you gone. I want you to forget you ever even knew me."

__

That's impossible, El wanted to say. You never forgot a man like Sands. He was unique, so different from most other men that even after all this time, El could not say how Sands' mind worked.

"Are you listening to me?" Sands asked peevishly.

"I am listening," El said.

"Good."

They walked on for a bit. El focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Rain dripped down the back of his neck. His clothes hung off him, and even the jingle of the chains on his pants sounded dispirited. He wanted to lie down and sleep for a week.

He was thirsty. He tipped his head back and let the rainwater collect in his open mouth. The cartel had fed him, but reluctantly, and the food had been cold and nasty. What had they cared if he got sick, or lost weight? As long as he stayed alive so the Colombians would pay the reward, they had been happy.

A shudder worked through him. He had never been tortured before. He had not known what it felt like to lose his self-control and scream. He had not known the limits of what he could endure, or what it felt like to be driven far beyond those limits so that he begged them to stop.

Sands felt him shudder. "What is it?"

He remembered how callous he had been, asking for details about the day the cartel had blinded Sands. And suddenly one of the emotions that now resided in his chest rose to the forefront, making him bow his head. It was shame, and it was heavy.

"You're not going to faint, are you?"

"No," he whispered. But he wanted to. Oh God he wanted to.

"Good," Sands said. "Because I think I might." The volume of his voice dropped alarmingly, and his knees suddenly buckled.

The pull on El's left side was too much. He sank to his knees in the mud. His head sagged forward. Beside him, Sands knelt on all fours, muttering something to himself that sounded violent.

__

We need shelter, he thought. _Quickly._

He looked up, blinking several times to get his eyes to focus. There. Barely glimpsed through the rain, but still visible. A building. A house, or a shed. Small and crude, but there nonetheless.

"Sands." He placed the heel of his left hand on Sands' shoulder. Nothing more. His left hand was not as badly burned as the right, but it had not escaped damage. "Get up. There's a house."

"You better be right," Sands said. "I don't have the energy to go chasing one of your hallucinations."

"Maybe this is all a hallucination," El said. He was suddenly struck by an idea that was both marvelous and terrible. "Maybe I am not here at all. Maybe I am actually dying, lying in the dust beside my Carolina, and I am imagining all this."

"No offense, El," Sands said. "But if someone was going to hallucinate me, I'd like to think it would be someone a bit cooler than you. Not someone who wears chains on their clothes like some reject from a bad S&M club." He took a deep breath and climbed to his feet. He reeled to one side, but somehow stayed erect. "Besides, I think I'm pretty fucking real. Now get up here and help me."

Somehow El stood up; he was never quite sure how he found the strength. All he knew was one minute he was kneeling in the mud, and in the next he was standing, Sands' arm slung about his waist.

They started forward. After only a step, Sands stopped. "Wait. Wait."

Obediently El stopped. His body thanked him.

"I can't lean down," Sands said. "But in my boot, my right boot, there's a knife. Get it for me."

"I can't," El said.

"What?" Sands snapped.

"My hands," El said. He remembered going to the doctor after Moco had shot him through the hand. He had asked if he would be crippled for the rest of his life, and the doctor had laughed at him. Now he looked at his burned hands and wondered the same thing.

"Just. Get. It." Sands' voice was tight with tension. El suddenly realized that Sands had lost his guns in the crash, and felt weak with relief. It would have been a cruel irony if he survived the accident only to be gunned down by an angry ex-CIA officer.

As carefully as he could, he knelt down. He fumbled with his left hand for the knife, finding it after three tries. He drew it out, still sheathed. "Now what?"

"Give it to me," Sands said. He held out his hand.

"Help me up," El said. Now that he was down here, he didn't want to get back up again.

Sands swore under his breath. He patted down El's arm until he found the mariachi's wrist, and then he seized it and pulled.

El tottered to his feet. "What do you need the knife for?"

"Well I was thinking of slitting your throat if you kept asking stupid questions," Sands said lightly. "How's that?"

El considered. He could bury the knife in Sands's chest before the other man even knew what was happening. Sands was blind. His hearing was good, but it was raining, and he was hurt. He was at a distinct disadvantage now, and he knew it.

Maybe that was why he wanted the knife, El thought. It would make Sands feel better to have the weapon. It would restore some of his confidence. Then he thought of the mocking tone in which Sands had talked about slitting his throat, and changed his mind. Sands was already plenty confident.

He held out the knife. "Here."

Sands took it. "Done picking your nose?" he asked snidely. He pulled his sodden shirt out from his jeans and began sawing at the hem. When he had made a good cut in the material, he changed the direction of the blade, and began cutting longwise.

El watched all this in silent fascination.

Sands cut a long strip of black fabric from the bottom of his shirt. When he was finished, he didn't bother tucking it back in, but let it hang loosely at his hips. He slid the knife back into its sheath, and the sheath into the waistband of his jeans. He doubled over the strip of fabric and then tied it about his head like a blindfold. In response to El's unasked question he said, "Very unsanitary to be walking around like that. Plus, I don't like you fucking staring at me."

Since he hadn't been staring at all, El was vaguely offended by this. He said, "Does it hurt, when the rain goes into the sockets?"

"No," Sands said. He uttered a humorless bark of laughter. "I almost wish it would, you know?"

El understood. No pain meant an old wound, one long healed. It meant something over and done with it, something with no hope of changing.

He knew Sands paid attention to politics and news about the cartel, but he wondered if that interest in current events extended to the field of medicine. Was Sands perhaps holding out hope that one day science would be able to help him see again?

"Let's go," Sands said. The ends of the makeshift blindfold were ragged, and black threads clung wetly to his cheek. He made a vague gesture ahead of him. "Our carriage awaits, and all that jazz."

El stared at him for a moment longer, then turned so he could squint through the rain. The house he had seen earlier was still there. "All right," he said. He slid his arm about Sands' waist and Sands did the same for him. "Let's go."

****

They limped and stumbled toward the house. For an endless time it seemed to draw no nearer, and El stared at it in a panic. Maybe it didn't exist. Maybe he really was hallucinating. Then at last lightning flashed and the house was suddenly there, surprisingly close. Fortified by the sight, he pushed himself to go faster.

"Hey," Sands said weakly. He was leaning on El more than ever, scarcely putting any weight at all on his wounded leg. "I can't…"

__

Neither can I, El thought. _But we have to._

The house looked solid enough, constructed of stone, and with a flat roof. It was small, promising only three or four rooms altogether. The windows were intact and there was no graffiti on the walls, and its condition plus its remote location told El that this place had been built for illegal purposes. The cartel used this house, or other criminals in the area. Right now it appeared empty, however, and El breathed a silent prayer of thanks.

"Almost there," he panted.

"Shut up," Sands mumbled.

El tried the door, but without much hope. The knob did not turn under his hand. "It's locked."

"Well of course it is," Sands said wearily. "Haven't you ever heard of Murphy's Law?"

El had to admit he had not.

"Whatever. Look, just smash in a window."

"That will let the rain in."

"Oh my Christ." Sands gave him a shove, disentangling them.

El went down in a wet heap. Sands reeled to the left until his outstretched hand found the stone wall. He began feeling for the window. When his fingers encountered glass, he drew his arm back and smashed in the window with his elbow. He turned and smirked at El. Or rather, in El's general direction. "Apres vous."

"What?" The ground was wet and muddy and his landing had not been particularly hard, but it had hurt, nonetheless. The desire to close his eyes and sleep was overwhelming.

"I can't see, fuckmook," Sands said lightly. "So get your ass inside and unlock the door."

El stared up at him. During the long trek through the rain and mud to reach the house he had not really thought much about his chosen traveling companion. But now he found himself gazing appraisingly at Sands. Did he really want to share any more time with this man?

It was obvious that Sands still hated him. Already Sands had threatened his life. But did he think Sands would follow through on that threat? No, he didn't. Not just because Sands needed him alive for his own survival. His life was safe because it had already been spared. When Sands had told him to stay away. He had been pardoned then, given his penance and told to get the fuck out. That was why. If Sands wanted him dead, he would have died at the river, the moment Sands realized who he had pulled from the water.

"El?" Sands' head cocked to one side. "Did you pass out on me?"

He sighed. "No," he said. "But I am not sure I can get up."

"Well you better," Sands said. "Because if you make me go in there first, I'm not coming back to unlock the door. Once I'm inside, I'm staying inside."

From deep within, another emotion floated to the surface. This one was anger, and El welcomed it, because it gave him the strength to heave himself to his feet. "You know," he said, "at the river, I thought you had changed. Now I see you are still the same asshole you always were."

Sands grinned. "Well, yeah."

The window looked onto a small, dim room. By squinting carefully, El could discern the shapes and outlines of vague furniture. A doorway stood directly opposite the window. That was all.

He hooked one leg over the windowsill. "Wait here," he said.

Sands shook his head. Wherever his eyes were right now, El was sure he was rolling them. "Just hurry up."

El moved quickly through the room, holding his right arm to his body with his left hand. Being out of the rain was having a marvelous effect on his energy levels, he discovered. He suddenly felt much stronger.

So much stronger, in fact, that out of sheer spite he decided to leave Sands standing out in the rain, and explore the house.

Sadly there was not much to see. Calling this place a house was doing it a kindness. Whoever used this place obviously did not stay in it for long. It reeked of furtive meetings and whispered words. It had two big rooms and a small one that contained a gas stove and several kerosene lamps. There was no bathroom. No electricity. A few couches, a few armchairs, a few tables, a battery-powered radio in one of the rooms.

And under each couch, a cache of guns.

El debated with himself for all of five seconds before admitting that he would have to tell Sands about the guns. If he didn't, Sands would find them anyway, and then Sands would be pissed that El hadn't told him, and El wanted to avoid pissing off his new roommate at all costs.

First, however, he had to let said roommate into the house. He made his way to the front door and unlocked it. Most of the furniture was secondhand, stained and pocked with cigarette burns – but this lock was brand-new.

He opened the door. "I found some things," he said.

Sands walked in and punched him in the face. "Asshole."

El reeled backward, tripped over his own feet, and fell. Blood ran from his nose, and bright lights danced in front of his eyes. The blow had reawakened every half-healed wound he had, and even some that he had forgotten he had. Pain swept over him, taking his consciousness with it.

But before he passed out he said, "There are guns. Don't kill me."

The last thing he heard was Sands saying thoughtfully, "And why not?"

******


	18. Conversations in the Rain

Conversations in the Rain

Disclaimer: I'm unpacking all my boxes, but I still haven't come across El and Sands. I guess that means I don't own them.

Rating: PG-13 for language

Summary: El and Sands are forced to deal with each other.

Author's Note: The POV changes in this chapter from El to Sands and back again. 

****

There was rain. Blurring into pain and a voice that spoke his name harshly. More pain.

He was tired, and he just wanted the pain to end.

He slid back into blackness.

****

Sands was furious. He was stuck in a shack in the middle of a storm with a man he detested. A man who was badly hurt. A man whose life he had saved, twice in one day. A man who, for some strange reason, he was trying to help.

None of it made any sense, his own actions least of all. Sitting on his ass at Ramirez's for so long had been a big mistake, he was coming to realize. He had gone soft, all right. In all kinds of ways. He was losing his edge -- and his stamina; the walk here had nearly undone him.

A bitter laugh escaped him. Of course, anyone would have a hard time walking with two brand-new holes in their leg.

But he would be all right. And so would El. The mariachi had a dislocated shoulder and some broken ribs, and his hand was all messed up, but mostly El was just suffering from the cumulative effects of a month of captivity and torment. "Don't worry," Sands chuckled, "a few days at Doctor Jorge's house and you'll be as right as rain."

Thinking of Jorge killed his laughter. He hoped the FBI agent was all right.

And then he laughed again, this time more derisively, the laughter aimed at himself. Christ, he really had gone soft, hadn't he?

He toyed with the object on his lap. It was cold in the house, and his clothes were wet and clammy. He wished it would stop raining. The moment it did, he was out of here. Gone. Hopefully never to hear the jangle of those damn mariachi pants ever again.

"Sands?"

He jumped, startled. He hadn't known El was close to waking. "What?"

"Where are we?"

A thousand smartass answers ran through his brain, but he was too tired to pick one. So he settled for the truth. "West Culiacan. If we are where I think we are, there's a house that the cartel uses sometimes to make pickups and dropoffs." He smirked. "We are actually only about a mile from Ramirez's house, as the crow flies."

"Do you think he will come looking for us?" El asked.

Sands tried to settle himself more comfortably on the couch he had claimed as his own. "Well, that's hard to say. There's several answers to that question. If you mean Jorge, then I think no, he won't be that stupid. He'll wait for us to come to him. If he isn't dead. But if you mean Carlos Alvarado, then I think the answer is a very big yes. Or sí, if you prefer.

"And by the way," he raised the object he had been holding on his lap, "I have all the guns."

"I knew you would find them," El said wearily.

"Of course I did," Sands said. It had taken him the better part of an hour spent crawling on his hands and knees to find them, but by God, he had done it.

He leaned forward, touching a finger to the makeshift bandage he had wrapped about his leg. It was wet with blood, but not growing any wetter, so he thought the wounds had stopped bleeding. "So tell me, how did you get caught?"

El did not respond to this for a while, and Sands wondered if he had passed out again. Then El said quietly, "I think I wanted them to find me."

Sands wished he had a cigarette. It was fucking cold in here, and he was starting to shiver under his wet clothes. "You know, that whole reverse psychology thing never works. I mean, look at you. So desperate to feel alive again, or anything at all, and then what? You got tortured for a month. Congratulations, El. You're living proof that people should be careful what they wish for."

"And you?" El asked. "What are you living proof of?"

Sands gave him a thin smile. "Trust no one."

El said nothing to that.

Sands sat back, frowning a little. Every conversation he had with El was a battle of words. The problem was, he didn't know who had won that one.

"I am surprised you are still in Culiacan," El said.

God, he needed a cigarette. "Why wouldn't I be? Just because you turned and ran doesn't mean I would. You brought me here to kill, so that's what I'm doing." He favored El with another smile. "I'm going to kill Carlos Alvarado."

"I think," El said grimly, "I will join you."

"No offense, El, but I'm not exactly keen on spending my time with an insane mariachi again. I think I can handle this one on my own."

"I am not insane," El said.

"Well, you could have fooled me," Sands said brightly. "I mean, sane people are always asking me to kill little kids."

"I knew you wouldn't do it," El muttered.

"Ohhh," Sands said in the tone of voice people used to exaggerate comprehension. "I get it. So you tell me to kill the kid knowing I'll say no, giving you the perfect excuse to kill me instead. I'm feeling so much better about you right now. Let's be best friends!"

He aimed the gun at El's head. "Let me tell you something." All trace of humor or casualness was gone from his voice. He was sincere now -- as sincere as he ever was. "I can't stand you. In fact, it wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to say I hope you die in this place. However." He let a smile touch the corners of his mouth. "For some strange reason I can't quite fathom, I seem to feel this odd potential for what might possibly be a kind of kinship with you. You savvy?"

"No," El said.

"Well, neither do I, but there it is," Sands said. "So I'm not going to kill you, much as I might like to. What I am going to do is get the hell out. You can do what you like, just so long as it does not involve coming within fifty miles of where I end up. And right now, since I am here to stay in Culiacan, that means you will find yourself a nice cozy little setup someplace far, far away. Get married again. Have lots of niños. Run for President. I don't care what you do, just leave me the fuck alone."

"And what happens after you kill Alvarado?" El asked. His voice jogged up and down, like he too was shivering.

"That's for me to know and you to never find out," Sands said. In truth he hadn't the faintest notion what he would do then, but that did not matter. In his former life he had firmly believed that planning in meticulous detail only applied to the rest of the world. It was good to know what everyone else was going to do next. Not so much for himself. It was better to be flexible and spontaneous. All the better to take advantage of whatever happened around him.

So he trusted that he would figure out what to do next and where to go when the appropriate time came. Until then there was no sense worrying about it.

"I am sorry," El said.

Sands cocked his head. "Can I get that in writing? Oh wait..."

"The boy." El was definitely shivering now. "Is he all right?"

"Oh sure," Sands said with a lofty wave of the gun. "Nothing a decade or two in therapy won't fix."

"I didn't mean to hurt him," El said. "I just..."

"Yeah yeah yeah," Sands said. "That whole 'I'm so dead inside, why can't I feel anything?' problem. You know that gets really old, really fast, El."

"You knew?" El asked. Stupidly enough, he sounded insulted. Which was about the dumbest thing Sands had ever heard. El was hardly subtle at the best of times, and the months they had spent together had been about as subtle as a brick.

Thunder boomed overhead. The rain, which had been slackening off, began to come down harder. Exasperated, Sands said, "I think all of Mexico knew."

El said nothing to this. He just lay on the couch where Sands had dumped him, and shivered. After a time his breathing evened out, and Sands realized he was asleep.

He sighed. He considered waking El up just so they could argue again, then decided it wasn't worth it. So he simply sat where he was, and listened to the rain.

****

The sound of gunshots dragged El back to consciousness. He wanted to be alert – a gun being fired was never a good sound – but he just couldn't do it. The best he could manage was a semi-lucid, wobbly look around the room.

Sands was still sitting on the couch. He was firing into the floor. His hair was drying in loose curls about his face, but his clothes were obviously still wet, because he was shivering.

No sooner had El thought this than a wave of trembling swept over his own body. He gritted his teeth at the pain that erupted in his ribs and shoulder, and groaned.

Sands went very still. The ends of the blindfold fluttered against his cheek. "El? You awake?"

"What is it?" he asked.

"What it is is that I'm fucking freezing to death over here. Get up and find some dry wood. We're going to build a fire."

El stared at him in disbelief. There were so many things wrong with what Sands had just said that he didn't know where to begin.

Sands brought the gun around and aimed it at his head. "Move."

"There's no fireplace," El said.

"Don't make me shoot you, El."

"There is no dry wood," he said. It was much dimmer in the house now. He judged the time to be late afternoon. The clouds outside were slate gray. Rain ran down the windows and drummed on the roof.

"Look around you," Sands said in a tone that suggested his patience was wearing thin. Very thin. "There's got to be a chair or two we can take apart. Now, I can't see, you can't use your hands, and I don't have the time to crawl all over this fucking house looking for what I need, so you're going to have to tell me where to go."

"Why are you still here?" he asked. "I thought you were leaving."

"I left my umbrella in the car," Sands said shortly. "Now start talking."

El looked around him. The room they were in had two long couches placed at right angles to each other. Currently he and Sands were occupying those couches. One other wall had two armchairs and the fourth wall was empty.

There was also a coffee table. It had been pushed to one side, so that it stood directly in front of the two armchairs. It was made of wood.

"To your right," El said. "A table." Then he said, "Are your matches dry?"

"If they weren't, do you think I'd be talking about a fire?" Sands snapped. He maneuvered himself to the edge of the couch, and then lowered himself to the floor. His face tightened with pain, and he kept his leg stuck stiffly out in front of him. "How far?"

El told him. Sands moved across the floor, using his hands and his good leg. When he was near the table, El warned him, and Sands reached out and found the wooden table. He took hold of it and grinned.

Fifteen minutes later, they had a fire. Sands had opened a window, and rain pattered onto the floor, but it gave the smoke an outlet to escape. El tried not to think about what would happen if the wrong people saw that smoke rising from the house, and concentrated on soaking up the warmth cast by the flames. 

He looked at his reluctant companion, and then frowned. Sands had left the gun on the cushion of the couch in order to cross the floor and reach the table. Right now, in fact, El was closer to it than he was. El found it hard to believe that Sands would voluntarily give up possession of the gun, and he wondered how it had happened. Either Sands was hurt more than he was letting on, or he had decided to take a chance and trust El. Whatever the real reason was, El knew he would never find out for sure.

He closed his eyes. He had been in pain for so long it seemed almost inconceivable that there had been a time when he had not known its steel touch. He needed a sling for his arm. He was so tired. The fire was warm but it was too small, and he was still shivering.

"Damnit."

Reluctantly El opened his eyes. Sands sat on the other side of the fire, nursing his thumb. "I think I got a splinter when I destroyed that table."

El was not surprised. Sands had attacked the wood with surprising fury, making him glad he was not on the receiving end of the man's anger. 

Which reminded him of something Sands had said. Something about a strange kinship. "How did you know?" he asked. "You said you knew what I was going through."

Sands lowered his hand back to his lap. "Well, you were pretty obvious, El."

"You have experienced it," El prompted.

Sands laughed. "Hardly. I just know what you're doing. I see it all the time. You lose everything, so you shut down. You're not the first person it's happened to, and you won't be the last. The only difference between you and everyone else is that you tried to fight it. Most everyone else just goes on about their business."

"Music meant everything to me," El said quietly.

"Well you can still play the kazoo," Sands offered brightly.

"I lost my wife and my child," El said. "I have lost all my friends."

"Friends will stab you in the back and families are overrated," Sands said.

El looked at him. "Does nothing mean anything to you?"

"You're looking at him, El." Sands gave him a cold smile. "Me. I mean something to me. I mean a lot to me."

"Then why did you save me?" El asked. "If everything you do is for selfish reasons, why save me?"

"So I could tell you to leave me the fuck alone," Sands retorted. But a strange look darkened his face as he said it, as if he realized how lame the answer truly was.

"Dead men bother no one," El said.

Sands pursed his lips, but said nothing. He just sat there, holding his hands out to the flames. The firelight cast deep shadows on his face, emphasizing its sharp planes and angles. The strip of fabric he had torn from his shirt was very black. As it had dried it had conformed to the shape of his head, and it sunk inward in two distinct places as it crossed his face.

"Do you still dream?" El asked.

Sands was taken aback. "Are you asking literally or metaphorically?"

El frowned. He had meant it literally, but he could understand why Sands was not sure of his meaning. Sitting here around a fire, sheltered from the wind and rain, they had been taken out of their normal world and brought to a place where the rules no longer applied. He could ask questions about things like dreams, and Sands was free to answer them, and there would be no threats or talk of killing. "I mean do you dream at night when you sleep?"

Sands made a wry face. "Yeah, I do. But not like I used to. You know how in a regular dream, it's like being in a movie, and everything moves all around you? Now I just see things being still. Like looking at a photo album."

"But you can see in them," El said. "In your dreams."

"Yeah, I can see," Sands said, very quietly.

Silence stretched out between them. El wanted to ask about the kinship Sands had mentioned, but it was still too soon. The light outside grew dimmer, and he thought about the kerosene lamps he had seen, but he did not remember seeing any of the actual liquid itself. And there was something almost comforting about sitting in the gloom with only a fire to provide light. Some people, he remembered, had nothing at all to keep the darkness at bay.

With nothing else to do, his mind turned inward. It wanted to relive the agony of his captivity, and he had to wrench it away from those memories with a shudder. He never wanted to think about that again. It had happened, but he had been saved. He was free again.

Free to do what, exactly? Sands had spoken cruelly to him, but honestly. He had lost everything. He had nothing to live for.

__

Friends will stab you in the back and families are overrated. 

He did not believe that. The best years of life had been the ones he had spent first with Carolina, and then with his daughter. He had been surrounded by love and laughter and music, and all the hardships he had experienced to reach that point had been worth it. He had been truly happy then.

Now they were all gone. Carolina and his daughter. Lorenzo and Fideo. All the friends, lovers and musicians who had come before. There was no one left.

No one except the man sitting across from him. The man who hated him. The man who had saved his life.

Sands was still shivering. His left leg was straight out in front of him, a bloody bandage tied about it just above the knee. He was holding his hands out to the fire, which was already beginning to die down. They would need to add more wood, and soon.

He wondered if Sands had any idea how deeply lonely he was.

He thought about the woman, Ajedrez. Sands had trusted her with his secrets, and she had betrayed him to Barillo. El's memories of her were drug-foggy and not the best, but even during the brief time he had spent in her company, he had known she was dangerous and not to be trusted. It was a measure of how desperately Sands had wanted contact with someone that he had ignored the warnings that must surely have gone off in his head, and confided in her anyway.

Thinking things like that could almost make El feel sorry for him.

He closed his eyes again. He remembered the way Carolina had smiled at him, a secret smile hinting at things only she and he knew. When she had smiled at him like that, he had felt like they were the only two people in the world.

Deliberately not thinking about what he was doing, he scooted around the fire. He kept his eyes closed – that too made it easier.

Sands stiffened as he got closer. "What are you doing?" he asked warily.

"I am declaring a truce," El said. "For today. So that we might live to fight the battle some other day."

He had to open his eyes so he could see where he was going. The fire was dipping low, and its light was pale and red. Sands looked confused and uncertain. "El?"

"I do not want to die here," El said.

"You're not going to die," Sands said automatically. One hand had gone to his hip, and now he looked dismayed as he realized he had left the gun behind. "What are you doing, El?"

"Turn around," El said. "The fire is dying, and we are still wet. If we sit with our backs to each other, we can get dry faster, and our body heat will keep us warm."

Sands laughed. "Oh, my Christ," he said. "This is certainly unexpected. I wouldn't have pulled you from that river if I had known I would have to be defending my virtue from you."

El turned so his back was to Sands, and his right side was being toasted by the fire. His injured shoulder moaned at the extra heat, and he clenched his jaw and bowed his head. "It will be a long night," he said.

"The longest ever," Sands agreed. But he scooted about so he could lean up against El.

They sat there, very still. At first El shivered harder from the contact with Sands' wet clothing, but gradually the extra body heat began to compensate for it, and the worst of his chills abated.

Pain and exhaustion reached up to claw at him. They whispered to him. The fire sank into red embers. There was a head resting on his shoulder.

Slowly he sank to the floor. He slept.

**** 

When he woke, it was morning. It had stopped raining, and he was alone.

******


	19. Blinded by the Light

Blinded by the Light

Disclaimer: I have no witty way of saying it today. They're not mine.

Rating: R for language and mature themes

Summary: El and Sands finally begin to see the light

Author's Note: Switching POVs again in this chapter. And thanks to Melody my beta, who has been so wonderfully patient in waiting for the events of this chapter, despite the fact that I hinted at them ages ago.

And at the risk of sounding like a silly fangirl, congratulations to Johnny for winning the SAG Award! 

****

One month after his rescue, El Mariachi sat in a Durango bar and watched the news on TV of the destruction of Carlos Alvarado's cartel. It was the top news story, and the anchorman at his desk was finding it hard to keep a straight face as he reported on the slaughter. People in the bar raised a glass and drank heartily. Durango, after all, was not too far from Culiacan.

The only dark spot amid all that good news was that Carlos Alvarado himself had escaped. The newsanchor and his paid experts had all kinds of theories on the drug lord's whereabouts. El smiled grimly as he finished his drink. He knew it did not matter where Alvarado had gone. Wherever he was, Sands would find him.

He scowled. There he went again. Just when it seemed like he could go a whole day without thinking about Sands, his mind would find some way of reminding him.

Sands, who hated him so much he had walked away on a wounded leg in order to leave as soon as it was possible. Sands, who had sent the doctor to the house, and in so doing saved El's life yet again.

El sighed.

He would never forget that morning. Looking around and realizing he was alone. Hearing water drip from the eaves of the roof. The gray light coming through the window illuminating the charred remains of the fire.

He had lain back down on the floor. He had not thought he would do anything. His mind had been blank.

Some time later, a knock had sounded on the door. A man had entered.

The American had sent him, the man had said. He was a doctor.

El had stared at him, not quite comprehending. Even now, the memory of that morning was blurred by pain and a streaky white haze that seemed composed partly of old smoke and partly of rainclouds. 

The American had walked until a policeman had seen him, the doctor had said. There was an investigation into the accident. The police had taken the American to safety.

"I tended him myself," the doctor had said. "When I was finished, he told me there was someone in the house, but that I should not let the police know." He had given El a narrow stare. "Are you one of _them_?"

El had raised his burned hand. "What do you think?" he had asked.

So the doctor had treated him. And he had left the house and he had healed. And now here he was in Durango, sitting at a bar watching television. His shoulder was stronger and he could use his hand a little, but he could not even think about touching a guitar without feeling burned all over again.

And he could not stop thinking about that day in the rain.

He kept remembering what Sands had said about a kinship. That moment of recognition, when he had realized Sands was as lonely as he was. 

And he remembered other things too. The exchange of conversation. The reassuring warmth of another body against his. The relief of having nowhere left to run, and no more secrets to hide. The knowledge that he could just be himself and not have to pretend.

He wondered if Sands was still in Culiacan.

He wondered if Sands ever thought of that day, too.

****

Sands was most definitely not thinking about that day.

He never thought about it. Not one bit.

It was late; the air was cooler and the crickets were in full chorus. He should be getting back. Jorge would need him soon. But he stayed right where he was, sitting on a flat rock that still held some warmth from the day's sun. He ground his cigarette out under his heel and rested his elbows on his thighs. To a passing observer he would have looked like someone who had been walking along the road who had then decided to sit down and rest.

In truth he was so tired he was surprised he didn't just fall over. He had abandoned sleeping. He didn't like to sleep anymore. He didn't like the dreams he was having.

Hell, he shouldn't even be here anymore. He had done what he had set out to do. The cartel in this area was destroyed. Carlos Alvarado had cut and run, and by all rights he should be chasing after that fucker. So what the hell was he still doing here?

It was all El's fault, he figured.

Except reminding himself that El was to blame only made his mind return to thoughts of that day in the rain, and that was one thing he most definitely did not want to think about. Not now, and not ever.

He sighed.

He hadn't meant to fall asleep that day. That was the last thing he was certain of. But the sound of the rain had gone from being aggravating to being soothing, and El's steady breathing had lulled him into a dull torpor that had moved swiftly toward sleep. When El had slumped to the floor, he had let himself be dragged down too, and shortly after that he had fallen asleep.

The absence of rain had woken him. Birdsong had filtered in through the window, and he had known it was morning.

He had lain very still, hardly daring to breathe. He had been on his side, and from shoulder to hips he had been in contact with El's solid bulk. 

Even now, a month later, he marveled at the strangeness of it. Instead of leaping up and recoiling in disgust, he had done nothing. He had just lain there, breathing in tandem with El. He had not wanted to move, or do anything that might disturb the peace of the moment. He had never lacked for lovers before, but very few of them had ever stayed the night. Waking up beside a warm body was a unique enough sensation that it had given him pause. He had been possessed of a bizarre – and mercifully brief – wish that nothing would happen to disturb him.

Of course it had not lasted. Eventually it had occurred to him what he was doing, and overcome with horror, he had sat bolt upright. He had known then that he had to leave, and fast.

So he had left El in the house. He had hobbled back in the direction they had come, reasoning that this was his best chance of encountering someone. Fortunately he had not had to go far before a policeman investigating the accident had spotted him. From there it had been a simple matter to return to civilization.

But annoyingly he could not forget about those hours spent in the house with El. They nagged at him, and popped up in his mind when he least expected it. He had hoped releasing his tension and frustration on the cartel would help, but now they were all dead and he was still filled with an unfocused unease he could not identify.

A night insect brushed by his face, and he swatted at it. It really was getting late. He needed to be getting back. Jorge was still bedridden, and the FBI agent got pissy if he had to wait too long for things.

Sands stood up and waited for the inevitable dizziness to unravel, so he could start walking toward the house. He felt light-headed every time he stood up now, and he knew that was due to lack of sleep, yet he still could not bring himself to lie down at night and dream.

Not when those dreams put him right back in that house again. No thank you.

Because he was not thinking about that day. Not at all.

****

El left Durango at dawn. He had tossed and turned for several hours before reluctantly admitting that he was not going to get any sleep on this night. After that it had taken some time to admit to himself what he was going to do, and still longer to actually find the nerve to do it.

But he was on the road now. Heading north. To Culiacan.

He deliberately did not let himself imagine what would happen when he arrived. It was better that way. Planning things could only get him into trouble.

Still, he couldn't help hoping that everything would go well.

****

The sound of a car door slamming shut roused Sands. It was mid-morning. He was sitting in the kitchen, lazily stirring his coffee. He made two pots these days. One for Jorge, and one for himself that was scaldingly strong. Mornings were the worst, when sleep beckoned most tantalizingly. He needed the coffee to stay awake then.

Now, however, thoughts of sleep were banished from his mind. He rose to his feet and drew one of his guns. Even in the relative security of Jorge's house he was always armed. He had learned his lesson the day the Colombians had come for him, the day El had saved his life and forced him into servitude. Never again would he be without a gun on his person at all times.

__

Never again, said a snide voice in the back of his mind, _except when you're stuck with crazy mariachis in the rain._

He listened hard for approaching footsteps, but heard none. He frowned. Jorge was well-liked and respected in town – nobody held it against him that he had lived in America for some time – and he received many visitors. Whenever this happened Sands had to make himself scarce, so no one would know he was there. He suspected most of the people knew he was there anyway, but they chose to act as if he wasn't. After all, he had destroyed the cartel for them, and they owed him. For his part he was perfectly happy to maintain the fiction. The less people he had to deal with, the better.

But today there were no footsteps. No one walked up to the front door. The doorbell did not ring. Nobody knocked. Whoever was here, they were not here for Jorge.

Deeply suspicious, Sands left the kitchen. He held the gun tightly.

Outside, there was nothing but silence. Sands did not trust that silence one bit. Gripping the gun with both hands, he eased through the house until he reached Jorge's bedroom. Where the FBI agent had been ever since coming home from the hospital.

Jorge had been flipping through a magazine, but when he saw Sands, the sound of pages riffling abruptly stopped. "What is it?"

"Expecting visitors?" Sands asked in a low voice.

"No," Jorge said. A drawer rattled open and then there came the very welcome sound of an ammo clip socking home.

Sands smiled tightly. "I'll go see who it is."

He moved through the house on silent feet. When he entered the living room he crouched down, walking in a path that kept him out of the line of sight of anyone looking in the open windows. He had long ago memorized that path, and he walked it now without even thinking twice about it.

There were still no footsteps from outside. But he could hear the ticking noise of a car engine cooling. Someone was out there. 

Whoever it was obviously thought they could play games. As if being blind made him deaf and stupid too. So he knelt down between the front door and the window, and he waited.

It was a long wait. But Sands was a patient man. Especially when he knew his wait would be rewarded.

Still, he was surprised when the sound finally came. Not footsteps, but a voice.

"Sands."

A voice he knew all too well.

As he had promised El on the day of the storm, he gave no second chances. Careful not to present too much of himself as a target, he aimed out the window, and fired.

Glass shattered. Bullets spanged off metal. He wondered dimly what kind of car El was driving.

"Who is it?" Jorge shouted from the back room. He had broken his leg and his hip in the car accident, and he still could not walk. But Sands did not doubt that Jorge would find a way to back him up, should the need present itself. That was nice to know. It was a good feeling to know someone had his back.

"It's the Avon lady," Sands called. "I told her I wasn't interested but she wouldn't take no for an answer."

Perplexed silence met this. He hoped Jorge wasn't about to do anything stupid.

"Sands." El spoke from the front yard. He was using the car as protection, Sands thought scornfully. It was a cowardly tactic, one he would never have expected from the mariachi.

"Now I know your English isn't that bad," Sands said out the window. "I know you understood me when I told you to leave me alone. And yet, here you are. I can't help but wonder why. Still looking for a way to fulfill that deathwish, are we?"

"I came to see you," El called.

Sands squeezed off a couple shots. The bullets struck the car, doing more damage, but probably not coming close to El's position. "That's not a very nice thing to say to a blind man," he said.

"I am unarmed," El called.

"And I'm going to believe that why?" Sands asked.

From the bedroom Jorge called out, "Should I call the police?"

"No!" Sands snapped. "Just shut up!"

His mind raced. El was here. To see him. The awful tiredness that had dragged down his step for weeks was gone. He felt alert, and very alive. Energy coursed through him, making his heart beat in triple-time. Sweat broke out on his brow.

"Sands?"

He shook his head sharply. Christ, was he really thinking of going out there?

Well, why not? This was his house too now, by God. He lived here. He was practically Jorge's fucking nurse. Why shouldn't he walk out there? He had every right to be here. El did not. El was the trespasser, not him.

So why did he suddenly feel so guilty?

Pissed off at himself, he stood up and flung open the front door. Keeping his gun trained on the place where El's voice had come from, he stepped out onto the porch. He went down the stairs until he stood on the grass. "What the fuck do you want, El?" he asked, letting a light-hearted lilt creep into his voice. 

Chains jingled as El moved. Sands tensed, but the mariachi was only putting the car between them again. "I said. To see you."

"How sweet." He held the gun in both hands, the way they had taught him at Langley. "Now what do you really want?"

"My wife asked me that once," El said quietly. "_Que quieres en la vida._ It means--"

"I know what it means," Sands snapped.

"Sí," El said. "I forget sometimes. You speak Spanish very well."

"So I've been told," Sands said tightly. "And you still haven't answered my question."

"My answer to Carolina was _libertad_," El said. "Freedom. Now, I do not know what the answer is."

"I get it," Sands said. "You came here for a therapy session." He made a small gesture with the gun. "Well, this doctor is out. Now get the fuck off my lawn, and never come back here."

"When the cartel captured me," El said, "I was on my way back here. I wanted to apologize to the boy."

"Wow," Sands said. "You have no idea how much respect I just lost for you."

The chains on El's pants jingled again. Sands held his breath, listening, counting footsteps. The car was parked longways, he realized, with the headlights on either his left or right. Which meant that in another step or two, El was going to come around the other side, and he would have a clear shot.

"I wanted to ask you a question," El said.

Sands said nothing. He didn't want to be asked any more questions. Too often over the last month he had found himself thinking of what El had asked him during the storm. _Do you still dream?_

"Will you let me approach? I do not wish to shout it across the yard."

"What if I want you to shout?" Sands snapped back. He was beginning to get the very uneasy feeling that he was not in control of this conversation. Even though El was the one hiding and he was the one with the gun.

"I can wait," El said. "I merely wish to ask one question. And I would like you not to shoot me."

"Well you're just needy all over, aren't you?" To his amazement, he lowered the gun. Not much, but enough. "All right." In his best arrogant voice, he said, "You may approach."

El walked slowly forward. The chains jingled on his pants. Sands wondered why he had worn them. Without those chains El could probably move so silently no one would ever know he was there. If he had truly meant to approach the house, he could have done so without Sands knowing his identity. Which meant he had worn the chains deliberately. 

Sands frowned. He didn't like the direction of those thoughts. They led inexorably back to that day in the rain, and that was one place he was sworn never to return to.

"It is a simple question," El said. "And if you answer no, I will leave. And I will never come back."

"Finally you're starting to make some sense," Sands said. He held the gun low, aimed not quite at the mariachi, but not very far off the mark either. He was tense, but not worried. As long as El didn't get too close, he would still have time to bring the gun about and shoot accurately.

A few feet away, El stopped walking. "I want to ask you. Do you think about that day?"

There was no need to clarify which day. Sands knew. He knew right away.

__

Oh you son of a bitch. How dare you do this to me?

He could lie, of course. He _should_ lie. But he couldn't. Partly because he was curious to know what El would do if he answered yes. Partly out of sheer stubborn perversity, the same streak in his nature that had always made him do the unexpected and defy convention. And partly because, damnit, he wasn't sure he really wanted El completely out of his life. He had a worthy adversary in El, and he felt a grudging respect for the mariachi. El was the first person in years whom he had felt was an equal. It would be a shame to lose that.

So he held his head high and he said, "Yes."

"So do I," El said. He took another step closer. "You were right," El said. "I did what I did because I had let the darkness take me. I wanted to feel again. Now I do. I feel guilt. Bewilderment. Curiosity. Passion." He took another step closer, and then another. "Kinship."

Sands scowled at hearing that word thrown back at him. He had repeatedly kicked himself for saying it that day, and now here was his punishment. For the rest of his life he would get to hear El say it.

"You asked me why I came here. What I wanted. This is what I want. I want to know how this feels." A hand touched his wrist, and he instinctively recoiled. El pushed his arm to one side, and when he pulled the trigger anyway, the bullet plowed harmlessly into the ground.

El kissed him.

He had never been kissed like that before. It was a demanding kiss, insisting that he acknowledge it not just with his body but with his entire being. El's mouth was hot, and El's breath tasted like tequila. El's hands gripped his upper arms, pulling him close, preventing him from backing away.

Not that he could have. Sands was too shocked to move. He simply stood there and let El kiss him.

El tore his mouth free and let go of him. Released, Sands staggered back a little. He was breathing hard but he could not speak. His rational brain was flooded with sensations too alien to process.

"Are you feeling what I am feeling?" El asked in a hoarse whisper.

The sound of the mariachi's voice broke the spell. Sands swallowed hard. "That depends," he said. He had meant it to come out wry and ironic, but instead it sounded small and uncertain.

"No, it does not matter what I am feeling," El admitted. "What matters is that I feel it at all."

This was too deep for Sands right now. He had just been kissed by his mortal enemy, and he had not disliked it. He could not understand it. 

"Are you going to shoot me now?" El asked.

Sands frowned. He was still holding the gun, but he could not seem to remember how to use it.

__

What the hell is going on here?

"You were right," El said. "We share kinship. And I think I have just proved it."

The confident nature of this statement gave Sands some of his self-possession back. He raised the gun, although it still felt like an unwieldy foreign object. "You don't know jack shit about me," he said. He was horrified to realize his voice was shaking.

"I know you are lonely," El said. "As am I. I know you need me, as I need you."

"That's where you're wrong," Sands snarled. "I don't need anything from you except for you to leave me alone." He took a quick couple steps back, putting distance between himself and the mariachi. His legs quivered, and he cursed at himself. What the fuck was happening? What had El done to him?

He suddenly remembered that El had listed passion as one of the things the mariachi was feeling these days. He tightened his hold on the gun so hard that pain shot up his wrist. "If you came all the way out here just to get laid, you were sadly mistaken, El."

"That is not why," El said. "I have what I came for." He started to walk away.

Sands' confusion grew. What the hell? El had kissed him and that was it? "Where the hell do you think you're going?" he demanded.

"I don't know," El said. "But there is no reason for me to stay." His voice rose a little at the end, turning the sentence into something of a question.

Reason to stay. Reason to stay? The hell. _I am not lonely. I don't need anyone, and lest we forget, I'm living with an injured retired FBI agent in a house where a kid comes and goes as he pleases. That's hardly the lifestyle of someone who is alone._

But he knew that was bullshit. It was possible to be alone while surrounded by people. In fact, in Sands' experience that was often the case. And until recently he had preferred it that way. He didn't like the entanglement of relationships. Not to mention the last time he had tried to form a connection with someone, she had betrayed him and had him blinded.

And now?

El had stopped walking. "I will stay away," he said, "if that is what you truly want." 

He could not say it. He seemed to have lost the power of speech. El's kiss had robbed him of his free will, and he could not say anything at all. He could not even think what he wanted to say. He did not know what he wanted.

"Then I will see you around," El said. A car door opened. Keys and mariachi pants jingled. The door shut. The engine started. It sounded unhappy, but it did not quit. The car drove off. Up the driveway and onto the road. It turned right, heading east, toward town.

Sands stood very still. Cautiously he touched his tongue to his lower lip. He could still taste El. A shudder swept through him. 

It was a long time before he went back in the house.

******

Author's Note: I must apologize to my readers who don't like slash. Normally I would put a warning at the start of the chapter, but I felt in this instance that such a warning would give too much away about what happens in this chapter. Rest assured, future chapters will contain a proper warning, if they need it.


	20. After All, Tomorrow is Another Day

After All, Tomorrow is Another Day

Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own them

Rating: R for language and violence

Summary: El and Sands have it out, and matters between them come to a head.

Author's Note: Switching POVs again. Mild slash warning. Also, ff.net seems to be eating my reviews and I'm not getting e-mail alerts about them, so I'm sorry if you left a review and I haven't responded to it. 

Thanks are in order for Melody my beta, who always makes me see things in a new light. She's a bit like Sands in that way, I guess. g (And I can't decide if she'll kill me or laugh her head off when she sees this.)

****

El drove straight through to Durango without stopping. He was afraid if he stopped he would start to think about what he had done and then there was no telling what would happen.

So he kept on driving. He focused on the road. He turned on the radio and although he did not sing along, he would occasionally tap out the time on the steering wheel with his left hand.

Back in Durango, he returned to the bar where he had watched the news report about the destruction of the cartel. The place was open even though it was only early afternoon, so he slouched at a table, nursed a beer, and finally allowed himself to think about what had happened.

He had his answers. After years of wandering and uncertainty, he had at last found a purpose again. He had found the person who set off sparks in his soul. Someone who challenged him, who kept him honest. Someone he could respect.

Someone who made him feel.

He finished his beer and grimaced; it had grown warm. Of course usually in situations like this, it was a good idea to like the person you wanted to spend time with. And he did not like Sands.

But he did respect the man. He greatly admired Sands' courage and his refusal to admit defeat. And Sands had changed, there could be no denying it. He had been concerned about Jorge Ramirez, and for someone as selfish as Sands, that was no small thing.

And himself? He was not magically cured or anything, and he knew it. But he had hope for himself now. He had goals for the future. He was filled with a nameless yearning for something he did not have – and now he knew how to get it.

He had been right all those months ago to believe that his fate lay with Sands. He had just not realized the proper way to achieve that fate. All that time he had thought he needed to be the cold hard killer, and he had turned his back on the things that had mattered. Now he saw it differently. He could not deny who he was. He was a mariachi, not a killer, and he was so lonely he ached for someone to spend his life with. 

The day he had realized this, he had wept for the first time in years. He had buried his face in his hands and cried all those tears he had not been able to shed for Fideo and Lorenzo, or even for himself. Afterward he had slept for hours, the calmest sleep he had known in an age. When he had woken up, he had felt whole again, like he had gone for a long walk under a cleansing rain. Accepting the truth about himself, it seemed, had enabled him discover his heart again, and what it wanted. 

The bar's stereo began to play a song with a wall of guitars and pounding drums. An American rock song. El frowned and stared into the amber dregs at the bottom of his beer glass.

Several interesting questions arose now. Whether he had intrigued Sands enough. If Sands could admit the same truths about himself that El had struggled so hard to accept. And most importantly, what Sands would choose to do once he acknowledged those truths.

The grinding guitars of the rock song were too much. El stood up, scattered some money on the table, and walked from the bar. He would go to his hotel room.

And he would wait.

****

Sands had no intention of going after El. For starters Jorge needed him, and then there was Chiclet to consider, not to mention the fact that Carlos Alvarado was still out there. Leaving Culiacan now was really not an option.

Besides, it was not like he wanted to go.

Midnight found him sitting in the living room, frowning morosely at a vapid sitcom on the TV. He was remembering his apartment in Washington DC. Alexandria, actually. He had looked long and hard for just the right place. Rent had not mattered. Location had. Proximity to things like the bank and post office. A corner apartment on an upper floor. Thick walls. Quiet, un-nosy neighbors. Covered parking.

Eventually he had found it. The perfect apartment. He had moved in during the course of one blisteringly cold January afternoon and spent the entire night unpacking. He had not let himself sleep until it was all done, and he had finally fallen into bed at eight the next morning.

Langley had called at nine, wanting to know where the hell he was.

He remembered that apartment now. The texture on the walls. The velvet Elvis painting he had bought in college and lugged with him everywhere he went. The bookcase with its biographies of Broadway stars. He had no idea what had become of his possessions. Probably the US government had sold them in an auction. Right now some lady in Denver was sleeping on his mattress, never dreaming that the man who had once slept on it now lived in Mexico and killed men because he had nothing better to do with himself.

He thought very hard about that apartment. About his things. About his life in America as Sheldon Jeffrey Sands, CIA officer. It was important that he cover all the bases. Because if he was going to go back, he had to know what he was getting into.

Of course he was still undecided. He could not make up his mind. It was either return to the States or...

No. He turned off the TV and tossed the remote onto the coffee table. No. There was no "or." He either went back, or he stayed here, but there was no third option. If he left Culiacan he was going home. Nowhere else.

__

We share kinship. I know you are lonely. As am I. I know you need me, as I need you.

"That is _not_ true," he whispered fiercely.

He had eaten two meals since this morning, and drunk at least two more bottles of beer than were good for him, but he could still taste El in his mouth.

__

Do you still think about that day?

He remembered waking up with the warmth of El's body beside his. He remembered the sound of their voices, almost but not quite, drowned out by the sound of rain.

On the wall of his bedroom in Alexandria there had been a poster of some anonymous hippies at Woodstock, naked and covered in mud.

The CIA had sent him to Mexico because they hated him, but also because they were afraid of him. Everyone he had ever met had reacted to him in the same way. Wary respect and fear, as if he were a snake that might strike at any moment. He had accepted this and even encouraged it because he had thought that fear was his due -- but he had learned what true fear was since those days. He had been bitten by a snake with a bite more deadly than his own, but in the last few months the poison of that wound had finally begun to leave his body.

He wondered what El would say if the mariachi knew he could play guitar. That in fact he played quite well, although he had not touched one in years.

He had owned a set of black silk sheets, he remembered, just for those nights when he planned to bring his latest date back to the apartment.

Now he wore black always. Black clothing, black boots, black sunglasses. Black to match the world around him. Black of blindness nothingness void.

He rose to his feet and walked through the house to Jorge's bedroom. He opened the door and rapped his knuckles on the wooden frame. "Hey."

Sheets rustled as Jorge stirred. "Is everything all right?"

Sands gave him a thin smile. "I'm leaving," he said.

"Right now?" Jorge asked.

"In the morning," Sands said. "I'll make sure Chiclet looks after you."

"Where are you going?" Jorge asked.

Sands shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I haven't decided yet."

"Before you go," Jorge said. "I have something for you."

"Whatever." He turned and walked out of the room. He was not interested in Jorge's gifts. Then again, he supposed that was hardly Jorge's fault.

After all, even he didn't know what he wanted.

****

El waited. Money was not an issue for him, but he disliked spending it on things like lodging. Yet he remained at his hotel. He was not sure how long he intended to stay here, but he felt confident that he would know when it was time to leave.

But it was not time yet. It had only been three weeks.

He used his time to wander the streets of Durango. It was September now and the children were back in school. He thought about the boy he had wronged, and hoped he was doing all right.

He visited tourist locations. He drank in many bars. He visited a doctor who told him that his hand was healing well. He began using his right arm to lift things, always being cautious not to put too much strain on the shoulder that had been dislocated.

He went into a music store and he looked at the guitars, but he did not touch any.

One night he came back from the bar and thought someone had been in his hotel room. Nothing was out of place or disturbed, but there was an air to the room as though someone had been there. That night he sat up in a chair facing the door, a gun in his lap, waiting.

But no one came, and he was left to wonder if he had imagined it all.

Then, four days later, he walked into the hotel room and stopped dead still. Sitting on top of his bed, looking perfectly innocent, was a guitar case. _His_ guitar case. The one he had thought lost forever when he had been captured by the cartel.

Still standing where he was, he looked carefully through the room. He knew it was a useless gesture, though – there was no one in here with him.

Slowly he walked over to the bed and stared down at the guitar case. He undid the latches and opened it. Inside was his guitar, the one that he had carried for years, the one that he never played but only used as another case. It was not a true guitar. It was only the shell of one.

He reached out a hand, but his fingers began to tremble before they could come into contact with the smooth wood, and he snatched his hand back.

Not yet. He wasn't ready yet.

He closed the lid and latched it. He removed the guitar case from the bed and set it on the floor. He went back out to the bar where he had just come from, and he drank heavily until closing time.

When he woke the next day it was already after noon. His head pounded sickly and the bright sunlight made him squint painfully. He stood under the shower until the water turned cold and after that he felt a little better, but not much.

He spent the day in the bar, but he did not drink. He just slumped at a corner table and glared balefully at the other patrons. When the waitress asked him if he wanted anything he snapped at her and pissed her off so much that she ignored him for the rest of the evening. This suited El just fine, and when he left just before midnight, he was stone-cold sober.

The moment he put the key in the door he knew. He opened the door, walked inside, and then stopped, just one step over the threshold.

Sands was sitting in the chair in the corner. El had not turned the light on in the room, so he had to rely on the light filtering in from the hallway. The shadows were long and deep, and he could not see the expression on Sands' face, but he had no trouble seeing the gun the man was holding. 

"Did you like your birthday present?" Sands asked.

El frowned. Involuntarily he glanced at the guitar case. He had not opened the guitar to see what lay inside, and it suddenly occurred to him that not doing so might have been a large mistake. "How did you find it?" he asked.

"Oh, well," Sands said lightly, "I found it when I was killing Carlos Alvarado's men and I thought I'd keep it as a souvenir."

"You had it when I came to see you," El said. He pushed the door behind him, and it swung toward the frame but did not close all the way. "Why didn't you give it to me then?"

"I would have," Sands said, "but I was too busy being kissed."

El flushed. He realized he had no idea if Sands was going to kill him or not. "So," he said, hoping he sounded as casual as Sands did, "you came all this way just to give me my guitar back. That's very thoughtful of you."

Sands smiled. "Well I'll be damned. You really can teach an old dog new tricks. And here I was thinking you didn't have a sense of humor."

"Then why are you here?" El asked again.

Sands stood up. When he did his face became visible in the light coming in from the hall, and El could see how pale and tired he was. "We have some unfinished business."

"We do," El agreed somberly. Because one way or another, whatever Sands decided, it all ended today.

"After I got your friends killed, why did you let me live?" Sands said. "And I'm looking for something a little more substantial than 'I don't know.'"

"But I have no answer," El said. "I wish I did."

"You need to try harder than that," Sands said, and the light tone of his voice belied the seriousness of his words. His hand holding the gun did not waver, and there was another pistol in the holster at his left hip. "Because after this the questions get complicated."

"I don't know why," El said. "I should have killed you. But there was always a reason not to. So I didn't."

"That is very lame," Sands said. "Even for you."

El said nothing.

"All right, let's try another one. Why did you say I was lonely?" Something flickered across his face too quickly to be defined. "Why did you say that?"

"Because you are," El said. "The same way I am lonely." He took a deep breath and went for broke. "Whether you wish to admit it or not, we are all each other has in this world. And the sooner we recognize that fact, the sooner we can go on about our lives."

"Our lives _together_," Sands sneered. But there was a question in his voice -- El could hear it.

"If that is what we decide," El said. His heart was pounding so hard he could scarcely hear himself speak. At any moment he expected to feel the blinding pain of a bullet entering his skull.

"You think just because you kissed me I'll say yes?" Sands demanded. He must have taken a step forward, El realized, because he was suddenly closer than he had been. The dim light of the room played on his face, creating blocks of shadow and light on his skin and reflecting off his sunglasses.

And that was right, El thought. That was where Sands belonged. He was a creature of both shadow and light, belonging wholly to neither world. _And so am I_, he thought. _I tried to live in the sunlight with Carolina, but that is not where I am meant to be. Neither can I live in the shadows, like I did for so long. I am in-between, and so is he._

"You're what?" Sands asked, and El realized he had spoken aloud.

"I am in-between," he said again.

"In between what?" Sands asked. With every word he sounded less belligerent, and more uncertain. "What are you talking about?"

"I will tell you," El said. "But I would prefer to show you."

He took a step forward and they must have been walking toward each other all along, because now they both stood in the middle of the room. Scant inches separated them. "I never did thank you for saving me," he said quietly.

"It was an accident," Sands said reflexively, but there was no heat in his voice.

"Not just from the cartel," El said.

"Oh, I get it," Sands said. "I saved you from the darkness within, right? From yourself? All that crap?" He nodded, as if just by asking them, he had answered his own questions. "Let me tell you a secret, El. Nobody ever saves anybody else. You're on your own in this world. That's the way it is. And if you haven't figured that out by now, there's no hope for you at all."

"No," El said fiercely. "I am not alone." He grabbed Sands by the arms and yanked him forward. He seized Sands' mouth with his own, silencing Sands' protests with a burning kiss.

For a moment Sands surrendered to that kiss, then he stiffened and bit down hard. El cried out as Sands' teeth sank into his lower lip. He stumbled backward, but before he could get very far, Sands had hold of his arm with one hand, and was pressing the gun to his head with the other.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Sands hissed. "I never said you could do that."

And then he leaned in, and his nose bumped El's, and then he was kissing El and they were pressed together. The kiss was violent and passionate and everything El had ever wanted. Blood ran from the cut in his lip, copper and salt in his mouth. His skin burned where he had contact with Sands. His arm, his lips, the place where Sands' arousal pressed against his stomach. He was pushed backward with the fury of that kiss, and Sands moved with him, and the gun at his temple never once let up.

Sands broke the kiss. He was panting. "I am not lonely," he swore. "And I do not need you for anything."

"Then kill me now," El demanded. He was breathing hard too, his chest heaving for air.

"I'll kill you when I'm good and ready," Sands growled, and kissed El again.

The bed, El thought. It was as coherent as he could be right now. He made a convulsive twist to the right, wanting to turn Sands so they could back up toward the bed.

Sands had just taken a step when the gunshot rang out.

The light was dim, but El saw it all as though he stood under a hot noon sky.

The bullet had been meant to punch a hole right in the middle of Sands' forehead. But he turned, and instead it clipped him high, along his hairline. His head snapped back, and he uttered a surprised cry. He staggered backward, and the second and third bullet got him in the chest.

El whirled around, his hands already reaching for his guns.

The man who stood in the doorway had a ragged mustache. "Don't even think it," he said. He aimed one gun at El's head. With the other he shot Sands again.

His eyes wide and staring, El turned so he could see the end. Sands dropped to his knees, and then fell forward. He landed facedown on the floor. The gun clattered from his hand and slid across the wood surface.

Carlos Alvarado smiled. He had the gun pointed at El's head again. "You've led me a merry chase. Fortunately, the American led me right to you."

El stared at him. He had never actively feared another man in all his life, but standing before Carlos Alvarado, he felt his knees weaken. A wave of terror swept over him. 

"Drop your weapon," Alvarado said. "Now."

El let the gun fall from his fingers. He could not look away from Alvarado, even when the man walked into the hotel room.

Alvarado shut the door and walked over to where Sands lay. Still keeping the gun trained on El, he stared down at the CIA officer. A smirk crooked his mouth. "I always knew I would be the one to bring you down," he said to Sands.

He looked back at El. He shook his head in false commiseration. "I must say, standing in the hallway, the things I heard... They touched my heart. I would never have guessed it, the great El Mariachi and the blind gunfighter finding romance amid a hail of bullets. Then again, I suppose it was inevitable, wasn't it? Two men with their backs to the wall, you two versus the world... you really had no choice, did you?"

El glanced down at Sands. Blood had rapidly pooled beneath his head, but already the flow was stopping.

"But the story has a happy ending," Alvarado said with a thin smile. The sight of that smile struck fear into El's heart, making him tremble all over. "Because I have you now, and one phone call from me will bring the Colombians here. They aren't very happy with me, as you might guess. So I am very pleased that I finally get to deliver on my promise to them."

He must have been running from them, El thought wildly. That was why Alvarado's formerly neat mustache was mussed. The drug lord was thinner than El remembered, and there was an unhealthy light burning in his eyes. Where his shirt sleeve bunched up about the wrist of his gun hand, needle tracks adorned the skin.

"Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head," Alvarado said. "Do it slowly, or I will shoot you in a place that is guaranteed to be painful but not life-threatening."

Carefully El lowered himself to his knees. He laced his hands together behind his head. His stomach churned with fear and sick dread. He prayed the Colombians would arrive soon, so he would not have to spend much time at Alvarado's mercy.

Alvarado started forward and then stopped. His eyes narrowed as he gazed at El's guitar case. "So that's where it went," he muttered. "Our little CIA officer had a sentimental side, it would seem."

El looked at Sands. He saw the blood in Sands' dark hair. His hand limp on the floor, inches from the gun that had not served him in the end.

And then El frowned. That blood. There was not enough of it. Sands had been shot four times, yet the only blood El saw was what had come from his head wound.

And he remembered that even though they had been pressed tight against each other during that last kiss, he had not felt any contact with Sands' skin.

Alvarado came toward him. Keeping his eyes on the floor, El asked, "Will you let me keep the guitar?"

"I might," Alvarado said. "If you're good." With his free hand he reached into his pocket and withdrew a set of handcuffs. They caught the dim light from the hall and gleamed. "But you really shouldn't get your hopes up." He grinned. "After all, you can't even play anymore."

El looked up at him. "You're wrong," he said. "I can still play. I play just fine." He dove for the gun on the floor.

Alvarado shot him. The bullet struck him in the upper arm, but El barely noticed. His hand closed about the gun. Lying full-length on the floor, he tilted his wrist up and fired.

And on the floor, Sands rolled onto his side. With his left hand he pulled his second gun and fired three times.

For several long seconds the only sound in the room was the rattle of gunfire.

Then two dry clicks filled the air. Carlos Alvarado dropped to the floor, extremely dead.

Sands let go of his gun and flopped onto his back. He groaned. "Oh, shit."

"How?" El asked. He rolled over so he could stare up at the ceiling.

Sands tapped his fingers below one of the bullet holes in his shirt, and El heard the dull thump of Kevlar. "A gift from my good friend Jorge Ramirez." He groaned again. "I think that fucker broke my ribs."

"He shot me," El said.

"Good job," Sands said wryly. He reached up and found the wound at his hairline. His breath hissed in. "Shit."

"Why?" El asked. His arm was beginning to throb painfully. The wound itself burned like cold fire.

"I didn't know what would go down here," Sands said. He grimaced. "And you know, I was a Boy Scout. Be prepared, is their motto."

El nodded. He stared at the ceiling, and the rectangle of light cast on it from the hallway light. He knew he had to get up, that sooner or later someone was going to come investigate the gunshots they had heard, but he could not find the strength to move. He felt weak with aftershock, and relief. He was not going to be tortured again, or turned over to the Colombians. He was safe now.

He lay there, Sands beside him. If he had wanted to, he could have reached out his hand and touched the other man's arm. 

"Sands?"

"What?"

"Do you think we were inevitable?"

Sands was silent for a very long time. Then he said, "I have no idea. But it does seem that way, doesn't it?"

Despite the pain he was feeling, and the horror he had so narrowly escaped, El smiled. "I think so, too."

They said nothing for a while. El felt his eyelids grow heavy, so he closed them. "Sands?"

"Yeah?"

"What's your name?"

"Ah, I don't think we're ready for that just yet, El."

"All right," El said. "But you'll tell me someday?"

"Someday," Sands promised.

"All right," El said.

And then he slept. 

******


	21. Epilogue

Epilogue

Disclaimer: El and Sands belong to Robert Rodriguez. I'll give them back now that I'm done borrowing them.

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Game over.

****

"No, not like that. Jesus, you're going to ruin it. Give me that."

"What? I did it like you told me."

"Were you even listening to me when I explained this?"

"Yes, but you did it too fast, I didn't get to see what you were doing."

"Oh my Christ. Here, let me."

With a few deft maneuvers, he had the sling about El's neck and the mariachi's arm positioned just right. "There. See? It's not rocket science, El."

"It's easier for you," El said defensively. "You've got two hands you can use."

"Excuses, excuses," Sands snorted. He gave El a little push. "Now go sit down."

"It sounds like they're almost done," El said. "Should we go inside and help?"

"No," Sands said with exaggerated patience, "we should stay out here and let them do all the work."

After a moment El said, "All right." He sat down in the chair beside Sands.

Sands lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, pleased to note he felt only a small nagging pain in his chest at the movement. Crickets were singing out on the lawn, and he could hear a moth beating against the porch light. Inside, Jorge and Chiclet chattered back and forth as they prepared dinner.

"Are you packed?" El asked.

He nodded. They were leaving tomorrow morning for Mexico City. El had said he wanted to stop first at the house he owned, the house that had once belonged to his friend Lorenzo, and Sands had not argued. He supposed he owed El that last visit.

They were going on the road. On the hunt. El wasn't really ready for it yet, but Sands had just shrugged and accepted El's wishes. It made no difference to him if they left tomorrow or a week from now. There was plenty of cartel out there, after all.

All in all, he supposed, things hadn't ended too badly. They had played their last hand, made their last move, and their game was over. He did not completely trust El and El did not entirely trust him, but that did not matter. With El life was simpler, more primal. With El the only things that mattered were heat and touch. With El he could say whatever was on his mind and not worry about being misunderstood or how the other person was going to react, and every conversation was a verbal battleground where he took no prisoners. Yet with El he could talk about things he had never talked about before.

With El, it was easy to feel kinship.

With El, it was easier to feel everything.

Sands put out his cigarette. He stood up. He grinned. "Ready to go?"

******

END

Author's Note: Many thanks to everyone who has reviewed or written to me. You guys are the best. I hope ff.net begins giving me my reviews again, but if not, please bear with me if it takes a while for me to respond to you.

This story would not exist without the support of my wonderful beta reader Melody. She kept me going even when I came dangerously close to throwing in the towel. I love you, girl.

As always, I look forward to hearing from you.

Rebecca


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